An investigation into forest ownership and customary land ... - Fern

‘So who owns the forest’
3 Past forest law and forest ownership
3.1 Laying an adequate foundation
The first forest law was enacted in 1953, the Forestry Act, creating a Bureau
of Forest Conservation in the new Department of Agriculture and Commerce
(1948). Its core policy was to establish a permanent forest estate and it was
empowered to create Government Forest Reserves, Native Authority Forest
Reserves, Communal Forests and National Parks (s.iv and v).
The law took care not to claim all forests (or forestland) as public property.
Instead it acknowledged that the lands where it would wish to establish Government
Forest Reserves were owned and that those rights would have to be adjudicated
and settled prior to their proclamation and the vesting of all rights, title
and interest in them in government (Forest Act 1953 s.vi).
232
An interim category of protected forests was provided for in the form of Native
Authority Reserves. These were described as potential Government Reserves and
would be established over lands within one or more tribal chiefdoms pending
their conversion into government-owned reserves (s.vii), eventually termed
National Forests.
The adjudication and settlement referred to meant compulsory acquisition in
the public interest and payment of compensation, in accordance with constitutional
law at the time (1847-1986). It was clear that protection of property rights
was a basic human right and that ‘Private Property shall not be taken for public
use without just compensation’ (s. 13th article 1).
Examination of one of the eleven Proclamation Orders for establishing National
Forests in 1960 claims that:
“all rights and claims of the original owners have been duly adjudicated
and satisfactorily settled”. 194
Unfortunately, this does not seem to have been the case. Predictably all of the
1.3 million hectares embraced by National Forests were far from empty and
194 Presidential Proclamation (W. V.S. Tubman) for Krahn-Bassa National Forest Reserve, 1,270,000 acres
on April 4 1960.