77 Once the rights have been recognized, the government has to follow certain procedures while acquiring forest areas. Section 4 of the FRA allows the government to resettle the forest rights holders for wildlife conservation projects only under the conditions that – (1) all the claims for the rights have been settled; (2) a proper rehabilitation and compensation package has been provided and the informed consent of Gram Sabha has been obtained; and, (3) that it is that last and the only option available. The first two conditions are significant as they are the ones always violated by the government. One of the recent trends in the exploitation of forest lands is the Compensatory Afforestation2 drive. With the increased global concerns over climate change, the new initiative of using forests as carbon sinks has emerged. However, it needs to be determined whether afforestation is also used as a shield for the authorities to exploit the forest. This process is governed by the Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Act of 2016, which requires that clearance of any forest has to be accompanied by the acquisition of equivalent non-forest land or twice the amount of forest land for afforestation. According to this Act, only consultation and not consent of the affected people is required for land acquisition, hence allowing arbitrary acquisitions. According to a report, this process has been used as an excuse to get around the proper process of land resettlement under FRA and there is no proper mechanism of monitoring whether the acquired land is actually used for afforestation purposes (Karthik and Kodiveri, 2018). According to a survey conducted by Community Forest Rights-Learning and Advocacy (CFR-LA), an advocacy group, many “ghost plantations” were seen in the areas acquired for the compensatory afforestation program (CFR-LA, n.d.). According to the study, some projects in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh were discovered wherein funds were invested for afforestation, but no plantation activities were commenced even after several years. Many environmentalists now assert that afforestation is leading to an effect opposite to what was intended. A tree plantation (as opposed to natural 2 Afforestation is the establishment of a forest or stand of trees (forestation) in an area where there was no previous tree cover. India Land Conflict Monitoring Report that 40 percent of all the people displaced by government projects are tribal people in the country (Kumar, 2017). It was then that the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act of 2006, commonly known as the Forest Rights Act (FRA), was adopted. It was enacted to recognize and record the rights of the scheduled tribes and other forest dwellers over the forests and its products. Broadly, there are three types of rights given to them under the Act – title rights, use rights, and right to protect and conserve.