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Brussels, December 8 - Friends of the Earth Europe has welcomed MEPs' backing for the passage of a Tribal Forest Bill in the Indian Parliament in the next weeks. Several key MEPs have signed a letter of support for the bill. [1] Tens of thousands of tribal people from across India marched in demonstrations during the past few days [2], demanding recognition of their forest rights and the passage of the Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill with the amendments recommended by India 's Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC). The Bill in this JPC-proposed form would strengthen the local self-governance of the forest communities, giving them powers to protect their forests in a transparent way against logging, mining and other industries, which are often enabled to exploit the resources without following legal procedures or without respecting the rights of the forest dwellers. "The city-dwelling governing elite have so far tended to consider tribals as "encroachers" and to displace them from their forest life in the name of forest conservation while at the same time distributing thousands of acres of land for forest-degrading industries such as mining," said in New Delhi Ville-Veikko Hirvela, forest campaigner from Friends of the Earth Finland (a working group member of the Forest Campaign of Friends of the Earth International). "We congratulate the parliamentarians who support the JPC-proposed Bill. The forest-dwellers of India have preserved the forests in a sustainable condition for centuries by living there indigenously without official land ownership documents. They demand to be allowed to continue to live in harmony with their natural habitat. As the tribals alone are nearly 9 percent of the total population of India and the JPC-proposed Forest Bill would ensure the rights to only about 2 percent of the total forest area for the forest dwellers as cultivable habitat, their demand is seen by many as restrained. The demonstrations in India have been addressed by many parliamentarians, former heads of the tribal commissions and tribal and local leaders. They have stressed the historic rights of the tribals to their own homeland and livelihood and condemned the government for its continued delay in the passage of this crucial and historic legislation. The demonstrators demanded forest rights for all forest dwellers, including also those who have been displaced during the past 26 years (after the cut-off year 1980). This was recently also proposed by former Lok Sabha parliament house speaker PA Sangma, General Secretary of the Nationalist Congress Party, in his letter to the Prime Minister. [3] The Bill would be an internationally important step in the implementation of the United Nations biodiversity convention regarding the rights and abilities of indigenous local communities to maintain sustainable relation of human life to nature, and therefore in the recognition of the link between cultural and biological diversity. FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Ville-Veikko Hirvela, environmental activist, Forest Campaign of Friends of the Earth Finland, phone +91 11 26713251 and +91 11 26177813 (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam office in Delhi / South Asian Dialogues on Ecological Democracy) (only until Dec. 11) or email: villeveikkoh@gmail.com Roy David, CORD, (Convenor, National Adivasi Andolan), Tel: Kai Vaara, environmental activist, Friends of the Earth Finland, Tel: + Rosemary Hall, Communications Officer at Friends of the Earth Europe: NOTES: [1] Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) who have already signed include a vice chair of the European Parliament's Committee on Environment (a former Finnish Minister of the environment); a vice chair of the European Parliament's Committee on Development; a former Irish Minister of the environment, the vice-president of the Green group in the European Parliament, and the Principal Speaker of the UK Green Party. [2] Demonstrations took place in big cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Bhubaneshwar, Ranchi and Bangalore, in addition to hundreds of towns and villages across the tribal belts of the country. [3] Letter available at http://www.ngoblog.fi More information at: www.ngoblog.fi IMAGES: Photographs from the Forest Bill Demonstrations are available at http://picasaweb.google.com/EthicalBlog/IndiaAdivasiCampaign |