SPECIAL
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BANGALORE TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2012
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BIOADVERSITY Community criticism
Communities and forests
The COP11 spoke of marginalised communities, yet voices that did not emanate from the official framework were relegated to the so-called “side-events” of the conference. While prime minister Manmohan Singh’s promise of strengthening the biodiversity preservation process drew applause from delegates, his government’s policies drew flak from those confined to the sidelines. Twenty-five organisations came together and criticised the a systematic weakening of the environmental governance framework in the country by highlighting: Notifications under the Environment Protection Act, such as the Coastal Regulation Zone notification and the Environment Impact Assessment notification, have been repeatedly amended (and violated) to allow more and bigger industrial projects in ecologically sensitive areas; There is no credible mechanism in place to ensure that such projects comply with the conditions under which they are cleared; and there is no assessment of the social and cultural impacts of projects, or of the cumulative impacts of several projects in one region; The Forest Conservation Act has become a Forest Clearance Act, to divert lakhs of hectares of forest for mining, industries and other such projects; Statutory public disclosure of important information pertaining to projects is often not taking place, despite orders of the Chief Information Commissioner, court rulings and repeated demands by community and civil society groups; this includes Environmental Clearance letters, Forest Clearance letters, etc. The Biological Diversity Act has been mostly reduced to a law granting access to the country’s biological resources and related knowledge, without empowering communities to safeguard these. Further necessary laws and policies, such as those dealing with the rights of coastal communities, are being blocked or delayed.
Tiger event and protest Tigers could not possibly have been left out of COP11. One of the side events saw the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), WWF-India, Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and Global Tiger Forum (GTF) host an event that focused on tiger conservation. The event ‘Have we turned the corner in tiger conservation?’ was meant to take into account the progress made by the tiger range countries with a special focus on India. Environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan signed off a Cards4tigers postcard campaign, but contentious issues either fell by the wayside or were made to fade into silence. Greenpeace activists, some of them in tiger costumes, tried to present a petition to the prime minister when he was on his way to make his keynote speech to the COP gathering. They were, of course, prevented from doing so. The roar of tigers gradually petered out into a deafening silence.
Among those who have had to bear the brunt of India’s recent economic overdrive have arguably been communities and natural resources. Contextualising this, in the backdrop of the recent Coalgate scandal, was a damning report that was released by Greenpeace during the Hyderabad conference. The report, Countering Coal, documented rampant environmental damage and gross human rights violations perpetrated against tribal and other forest dwellers in the forests of Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh, that are under threat from the Indian government’s massive coal expansion programme. The report, which took 16 months to compile, zoomed in on the other side of the Coalgate scam: impact on people and biodiversity. Mahua pickers in the Budher forest area, Singrauli district of Madhya Pradesh —Hari Krishna/Greenpeace
The recent Conference of Parties of the UN Convention in Biological Diversity saw the PM make tall promises about biodiversity and communities. But grassroots reality, Subir Ghosh reports, is otherwise
‘It’s doublespeak’
Marginalised H
igh-profile international gatherings make for tailormade occasions to make politically-correct statements. And so was the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Conference of Parties for prime minister Manmohan Singh. With India assuming presidency of the UN convention for the next two years, the occasion was perfect for Singh to spout those nice-sounding words. The prime minister promised roughly ‘250 crore for strengthening “the institutional mechanism of biodiversity conservation” in India. The gallery applauded. What astounded critics was not the seemingly paltry amount that was announced, but the aplomb with which the prime minister made his statement. After all, it is the regime of the same prime minister that has been consistently accused of throwing all “institutional mechanisms” to the winds in its frenetic pursuit of double-digit growth figures. The prime minister’s vacuous assertions may have sounded environmentally-correct to the COP delegates, but his speech came in the backdrop of his government’s contentious proposal to set up a National Investment Board. The trigger for this move is the fact that investments worth ‘1.30 lakh crore are held up for want of one clearance or the other. The clearances in question, needless to say, are of the forest and environmental kind. In other words, the NIB has a one-point agenda: to override all regulatory mechanisms. Indeed, the same “institutional mechanisms” that Singh ostensibly alluded to in his speech. Contrary to industry assertions that the Min-
istry of Environment and Forests has been an impediment to India’s infrastructural development and industrial growth, it is a veritable fact that the ministry has virtually operated as a clearing house for industry under UPA-I and UPA-II. The scam-ridden and inflationwracked Congress-led government needs to act with the next election in mind, and with industry firmly on its side. Hence, Singh’s need for a mechanism that would be omnipotent: the NIB will be vested with the authority to take a final decision that cannot be challenged by any other ministry or authority. The course of the debate over environmental degradation too has been altered: instead of ushering in development keeping environmental concerns in mind, the talk is now more of environment trying to ensure that industrialisation, for whatever it’s worth, takes place. Minister for environment Jayanthi Natarajan shared the platform with Singh at Hyderabad, but this she did after voicing muted concerns about the over-powering nature of the NIB. For all the bravado, Natarajan’s ministry ended up being on the non-environment side after the COP. For, soon came the word that her ministry had told the National Green Tribunal, the only quasi-judicial panel in the country that can challenge forest clearances, that those would now be out of its ambit. So much for strengthening “institutional mechanisms”. And all this could be done without the promised ‘250 crore. As for wildlife and forests? What are those? And marginalised communities? Who, on earth, are they? subir.ghosh@dnaindia.net
Man Kumari (right) and Usha collect mahua in Budher village in Singrauli. The proposed Mahan mines would make them lose their livelihood —Hari Krishna/Greenpeace
Ashish Kothari, founder member of environmental action group Kalpavriksh, coordinated the mammoth exercise that went on to coalesce as India’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP). The final report was never accepted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF). Here, Kothari takes apart the prime minister’s assertions point-by-point: What the PM said: We believe that the treasure trove of traditional knowledge should be used for the benefit of all humankind rather than for private profit. We will continue to work to strengthen our institutions to record this knowledge, to value its science and to provide benefits to its custodians. What the government does: Displaces and dispossesses forest-dwelling adivasis, fishers on coasts, pastoralists, and other holders of traditional knowledge, by taking away their lands and resources for corporate profit, thereby destroying the basis of traditional knowledge. What the government also does: Drags its feet in amending the Biological Diversity Act to empower communities in protecting their natural resources and traditional practices, and fails to implement the provision of the Act that mandates protection of such knowledge. The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library that the PM mentioned with pride, is a poor substitute for living, evolving knowledge that only local communities possess. What the PM said: We have legislated a Forest Rights Act that lends legal sanctity to the rights of forest dwellers, who are often the best friends of the biodiversity that resides in these magnificent forests. What the government does: Dithers in implementing the Forest Rights Act, with thousands of community rights claims pending across the country; worse, continues to violate the FRA by clearing projects for forest land diversion for mining, dams, etc, without first recognising forest-dwellers rights and without seeking gram sabha consent. What the government also does: Displaces forest-dwellers from tiger reserves in complete violation of the FRA. What the PM said: We will have to adopt similarly innovative approaches to deal with the issue of protecting fishermen’s livelihoods. What the government does: Clears hundreds of power projects, ports, chemical industries, tourism complexes, and other projects which are destroying coastal and marine biodiversity, and the livelihoods of fisher communities. What the government also does: Shelves a proposal for a fishing community rights legislation made in 2010 by the minister for environment and forests. What the PM said: We need to build a movement to conserve traditional varieties of crops. What the government does: Continues to push a model of agriculture based on large-scale monoculture, chemicals, and dependence of farmers on corporations, including through clearing geneticallymodified seeds like Bt Cotton.
Action plan vs strategy paper In 1999, the Ministry of Environment and Forests received a grant from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) / United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for formulating a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP). Preparing an NBSAP would have been part of India’s commitment to CBD. The mammoth process started a year later, with grassroots organisation Kalpavriksh coordinating the course of things. Kalpavriksh commissioned over 100 groups and individuals around the country to prepare action plans at local, state, ecoregional, and thematic levels. The process involved extensive consultation, public hearings, cultural events, workshops, exercises in educational institutions, media outreach, and other methods of reaching out to tens of thousands of people.The result was a comprehensive document that was accepted by the ministry in 2003 as only a Final Technical Report (FTR) of the NBSAP process. Six years later, the MoEF came out with a final action plan which, Kalpavriksh says, “is a brief document that reads more like a broad strategy paper than an action plan. Indeed it only goes a little bit ahead of a document it had itself released in 1999, the National Policy and Macro-level Action Strategy on Biodiversity.”
Civil society collective Statements by India’s political leaders and bureaucrats at the CBD COP11 in Hyderabad, assuring steps to conserve India’s biodiversity and the rights of its people, appear to be doublespeak. A fundamental change in course needed if India is to actually achieve these objectives. This includes respecting the knowledge and rights of local communities, ensuring decentralised decision-making of development and conservation activities, reorienting economic policies to put biodiversity and people’s livelihoods at the core, strengthening conservation measures against damaging activities, and strictly complying with laws that guarantee community rights to natural resources while planning development projects.
The thread that recurs through the canvas stitched together by Greenpeace researchers is that of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 (FRA). Most provisions of the Act, especially those pertaining to Community Forest Rights (CFR), have been thrown to the winds. Forests have been ravaged with impunity, and communities have been pulverised into virtual coaldust. The report launch saw Amnesty India and Kalpavriksh reiterating Greenpeace’s criticism of the government’s policies. The Indian government’s claim of protecting biodiversity and indigenous people stood nailed.
VOICES Himanshu Thakkar, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP): “The government’s decade-old National Biodiversity Act has been of no help for rivers and related biodiversity. In India, there has been not been any credible enviro-socio-cultural impact assessment of projects in the context of riverine biodiversity. Those affected are not even considered for compensation or rehabilitation, leave aside participatory decision making or benefit sharing. Unknown to many, India is considered to be a mega diverse country in the context of freshwater biodiversity. New freshwater species continue to be discovered at a rapid rate. Also millions of people depend on the riverine biodiversity and rivers for their needs and livelihoods (about 10.8 million people depend on riverine fisheries itself), , many rivers are considered sacred, and 100s of community conserved fish reserves exist across India. CBD has so far been of no help for the Indian rivers, riverine biodiversity and dependent communities.”
Pradip Chatterjee, National Fishworkers’ Forum (NFF): “Do not destroy us in the name of development, and kill us in the name of conservation. Fishing communities across the coast are being displaced by ‘developmental activities’ and their livelihoods are being destroyed. Even as communities are struggling to protect coastal and marine resources from such developmental onslaughts, ironically, in the name of conservation, the very same small-scale fishing communities are being denied access to resources they have traditionally fished.”