NEW DELHI: Over 100 civil society organisations from 15 states have flagged several loopholes in the Centre’s draft National Forest Policy 2018 and questioned environment ministry over the rationale of proposing involvement of private parties in regeneration of forests.In their joint comment on the draft policy, sent to the ministry, these groups have objected to the proposed Public Private Partnership PPP ) model for afforestation on degraded land, noting potential risk of such proposed move which, they apprehend, may be misused by private players for commercial interests.“There is no reason to believe that the participation of private parties will necessarily result in better regeneration of the forests or enhanced ecosystem and livelihood services to the local communities,” said the signatories, including experts and academicians from across the country, of the joint comments\suggestions on the draft policy.Expressing their concerns over the move, they said the urge to earn more profits and conflicting interests may only result in “corrupt and fraudulent practices” with little accountability to the local population and further degradation and diversion of the forest lands.The ministry had last month notified the draft National Forest Policy (NFP) 2018 and appealed the stakeholders to send their comments and suggestions within 30 days. It’s meant for replacing the 1988 national forest policy with the new one, syncing it with the country’s forestry-related climate action targets under the Paris Agreement.“The ministry will examine all the suggestions before coming out with the new national forest policy. It’s better to come out with draft and seeks opinion of experts and civil society members than just sitting over it,” said environment secretary C K Mishra when asked about criticism to the draft NFP.He said the final policy would be notified after examining all the suggestions.Experts and civil society members, however, want this draft to be withdrawn. “This draft forest policy needs to be withdrawn and that existing legal frameworks like Forest Rights Act (FRA) and Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act should be implemented properly”, said Kavitha Kuruganti , farm activist from ASHA and one of the signatories of the joint statement of the civil society groups and experts, on Saturday.Both these Acts empower local communities and forest dwellers in protecting forests. The civil society groups, in their comment on the draft, pitched for involving local communities for managing forests and gave examples of certain ‘Gram Sabhas’ of Maharashtra and Odisha to substantiate their point.Absence of clarity on definition of forest was also flagged by the critics in their note to the ministry. “Can we have a forest policy without clearly defining what a forest constitutes?” they asked while noting that the overall thrust appears to be on any tree cover being referred to as ‘Forests’ in the draft NFP 2018.Underlining that the existing definition of the forest is grossly misleading, they said the government counted as ‘forest cover’ an area more than one hectare in size that has more than 10% green canopy through satellite imagery - not just of traditional natural forests but also of plantations like eucalyptus.“Commercial mono-cultural plantations are in fact endangering farms and forests of the adivasis, impacting their way of life by replacing sustenance with profit generation and replacing shared sustainable life ways with privatized gains’.Unless this major definitional issue is addressed, this forest policy may not achieve its overall goal and objective of safeguarding the ecological and livelihood security of people, of the present and future generations”, said the groups of civil society from across the country in their note to the ministry.