Ecology, development and sustainability: environmental and social issues of the Forest Policy in contemporary India

This article proposes some reflections on the themes of ecology, development and sustainability, investigating a number of issues related to environmental protection legislation, the Forest Policy and the rights of ethnic minorities in tribal India. Based on the scientific assumption that the manipulation of ecosystems strongly matters as an anthropological feature probably associated with us since time immemorial and that the elements of the natural environment surrounding the community significantly become integral part of the cultural system, the proposed article wants to analyze the symbiotic relationship between man and environment among the Primitive Tribal Groups of India. The cultural heritage of the 'Indigenous Knowledge on the Forest' and its sacred complex preserves important notions pertaining to the field of botany, pharmacology and land use that can be regarded as key elements in thinking about sustainability. This article describes how environmental changes due to deforestation have led to social change and the loss of a great part this cultural heritage. The rich ethnographic data collected here are based on many years of fieldwork conducted among the tribes of Lanja Saora and Kuttia Kondh of Orissa.