My Response to the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel Report
I am aghast by the following examples cited in wgeep report of
extreme disregard as regards acceptable governance by the authorities of our irreplaceable ecological wealth of India:
"Issues of Concern
Scientific basis of forestry and biodiversity management
The
British introduced the current system of Forest Management in India
some 150 years ago with claims that it was a scientific system that
would result in sustainable harvests. Both these claims of scientific
basis and of sustainability are of dubious validity. Science must stand
on a solid bedrock of empirical facts. An
important weakness of so-called scientific forestry is the lack or poor
quality of its database, as the two examples cited above make
abundantly clear.
In the 1960’s the Forestry establishment decided to
abandon the "cautious" approach of conservation forestry and to become
‚aggressive"– clearfell and raise plantations, such as those of exotic
tropical pine or Eucalyptus species (Gadgil, Prasad and Ali 1983; FAO,
1984; National Commission on Agriculture, 1976). Regrettably, there was
no careful scientific research on which species would succeed and what
productivities could be realized. Some of the very best of the Western
Ghats natural forest was clearcut, on the supposition that the new
plantations of Eucalyptus would annually produce a biomass of between 14
to 28 tonnes per hectare. A significant proportion of these plantations
were a dismal failure, especially in the high rainfall tracts due to
fungal diseases cutting down their
productivity to just 1 to 3 tonnes per hectare (Prasad, 1984). Many
steep slopes of the Western Ghats of Kerala and Karnataka were laid
waste as the magnificent old stands of evergreens gave way to miserable
stands of sickly Eucalyptus.
Similarly, an assessment of bamboo
resources of Karnataka on the basis of the data available from the State
Forest Resources Survey, paper mills, and extensive field work showed
that the stocks were overestimated by a factor of ten (Gadgil and Prasad
1978, Prasad and Gadgil 1981). Scientific management also calls for
knowledge of growth patterns to decide on a harvesting regime that will
make the most of the growth potential. Yet, a majority of the
preservation plots set up in the early 1900s to collect data on girth
increments of different tree species under different environmental
conditions in the country are either poorly maintained or destroyed
(Gupta 1981). Similarly, Karnataka Forest Department’s
prescriptions on the number of bamboo culms to be extracted from a
clump were flawed because of a failure to appreciate the exponential
nature of the growth of a bamboo clump and consequent excessive harvests
from smaller-sized clumps (Kadambi 1949). Furthermore, the practices
involved cleaning of the thorny covering developing naturally at the
base of a bamboo clump. This was supposed to promote better growth of
new shoots. In fact, removal of the thorny covering rendered the young
shoots readily accessible to grazing by a whole range of animals so that
the recruitment of new culms to the clumps remained very poor and the
bamboo stocks remained stagnant. In
contrast, the local villagers were fully aware of this difficulty
attendant on clump cleaning and left the thorny cover intact while
harvesting bamboo for their own use (Prasad and Gadgil 1981).(Italics mine).
Further
wgeep:"Just to cite an example of an
experience of mine [Madhav Gadgil:MG] from the pre-RTI era, at a
meeting
in the early 1980s in Kolkata, presided over by the Finance Minister of
West Bengal to discuss environment and forest issues, the PCCF asserted
that Working Plans are technical documents that must never be made
available to the general public. In the early 1980s, MG was informed
that a full set of Working Plans for India was not available at any
institution in India, including FRI at Dehra Dun. Subsequently, MG could
access and study them at the Commonwealth Forestry Institute at Oxford.
When the proposal to clearfell large tracts of natural sal forests of
Bastar and plant them up with tropical pine was opposed by many tribal
groups, MG came to serve on a committee looking into the whole
programme. The choice of tropical pine was being pushed on the basis of
supposedly high production of a pilot plantation of the species. As a
committee we discovered that this pilot plantation lay in ruins, and
there were no proper records available of the
performance of tropical pine at all. The whole affair was a gigantic
fraud (Gadgil, M., Prasad, S.N. and Rauf Ali 1983)". So wgeep is
relevant when it thunders:
"Are forests/wildlife being genuinely protected?
India
today it is in the tribal and other forested lands that nature is most
bountiful. Sadly, the human communities coexisting with this wealth of
nature are afflicted by poverty and malnutrition. Clearly we must
transform the system that has created this equation of riches of nature
coupled with deprived human communities. Of course, we must conserve,
and, indeed, rejuvenate nature; but surely not by treating our own
people as enemies.
We have made available to the plywood industry for
as little as sixty rupees, giant wild mango trees which yielded fruit
famous for pickles worth hundreds of rupees every year. Such perverse
incentives have destroyed people's motivation for guarding nature.
But
let us ask, what may we expect, if in
place of local communities, we give more
powers to the state machinery? Will this lead to better protection of
the forest cover, of wildlife, and halt encroachment of outsiders?
Consider our experience of the last six decades of independence, leaving
aside the awful destruction of the continent, which the British
described as an ocean of trees on their first arrival, during the
colonial period.
When nearly 11 % of the country's land surface
under privately-owned forests was made over to forest authorities,
delays and corruption resulted in destruction of the bulk of this tree
cover.
Due to developmental projects whenever roads reached earlier
inaccessible forest areas, there ensued large-scale felling of state
forests.
Forest-based industries, to which were made available
bamboo, or huge trees for pulpwood at throw away prices, promptly
exhausted these resources.
Forest Development Corporations turned
themselves into (in the words of Dr. Salim Ali and Mrs. Indira
Gandhi), Forest Destruction Corporations and clear-felled huge tracts
of rich natural forest without ensuring its replacement by productive
forests.
Forest departments played a major role in destroying sacred groves under many guises.
With people viewing forest authorities as their enemies, the notorious
criminal Veerappan remained at large for two decades, despite killing
several government officials, and devastated the sandal wood trees and
tuskers of Karnataka and Tamilnadu.
All tigers were poached out of
the very well funded Sariska Tiger Reserve. Yet the government machinery
did nothing beyond disseminating false information on the number of
tigers.
The anti-people policies of forest authorities have landed
rich wildlife habitats like the Keoladev Ghana National Park into
serious trouble.
Consider, on the other hand, what our people have
accomplished, despite the powers that be continually giving them false
promises,
trying their best to weaken people’s organizations, and trying to
co-opt people into the corrupt system.
All over the country, keystone ecological resources like peepal, banyan, gular trees survive in good numbers.
Even today we are discovering new flowering plant species like
Kuntsleria keralense in sacred groves protected by people in thickly
populated coastal Kerala.
Monkeys and peafowl still survive in many parts of our country.
Numbers of chinkaras, blackbuck, and nilgai are actually on the increase.
People play a leading role in arresting poachers of animals like blackbuck.
In many parts of Rajasthan people are protecting community forest resources such as "Orans".
In Nagaland many community forests are under good management.
Many Van Panchayats of Uttaranchal are managing forest resources prudently.
Many village communities of the Central Indian belt are managing well forest
resources over which they earlier enjoyed nistar rights.
Villages like Halakar in Karnataka are still preserving village forests well in spite of many attacks by state machinery.
Peasants of Ratnagiri district have ensured good regeneration of their private forests
Thousands of self-initiated forest protection committees of Orissa have
regenerated forests brought under community protection.
One must
also emphasize that the excellent present day forest cover of
Switzerland has regenerated entirely on community forest lands.
After
all it is the local people that benefit truly by sustaining the health
of the local ecosystem. It is they that can guard and nurture these
ecosystems most effectively. It is also they who possess locality
specific knowledge of these ecosystems to manage them in a flexible
fashion. Today we have a tremendous opportunity to work with the people
and to protect and rejuvenate our natural resources, while
at the same time enhancing the quality of people's lives. It is
therefore imperative that we strive to implement not only the letter,
but also the spirit of pro-people legislations such as Joint Forest
Management (JFM), Extension of Panchayati Raj to Scheduled Areas (PESA),
Protection of Plant Variety and Farmers’ Rights Act (PPVRFA),
Biological Diversity Act (BDA), and the Scheduled Tribes and other
Traditional Forest Dwellers (Rights over the Forest) Act (FRA)."
I(R.
Ashok Kumar) have to offer my comments in complete frustration at the
way the government has witheld the wgeep report from the people. This
report deserves the strongest support from all the gram sabhas in a
reasoned down to top penetration of the several timeless locality
specific knowledge base throughout the country now
in an emergency
manner. The work of fifty years can be done
in five or
less in these days of mobility via internet and mobile phones.
Simultaneously, the knowledge must be converted into facts so admirably
narrated in the wgeep report via a scientific layered approach and facts
into values aspired after by the grama sabhas. See in this connection
my researches in the area of forests and vegetation and people at
http://practicethevedas.blogspot.in/
Regarding mining see
http://modernandnormal.blogspot.com
But
there is another aspect of the problems expressed by the wgeep report
that needs emphasising because it is lost in the piecemeal approach to
the way we may develop that is being adopted by the government and
prevalent among the misled people. The irreversible evil cumulative
effects of the entire activities of modern civilization requires that
modern way of life needs to the thrown overboard in its entirety as
advised by Mahatma Gandhi,the genius of Indian civilization and its
realistic votary: Given
enough time modern
civilization will destroy itself.
One of the evils is nuclear
energy programmes, which while giving no energy to people, poisons our
ecological base irreversibly, introducing radionuclides new to nature
into the biosphere, making mutation and extinction a huge scientiific
certainty. Thus to fructify preservation of nature it is imperative to
do away with nuclear energy programmes now.
See the horrifying details at
http://energyauditnuclearprogrammeindia.blogspot.in/
I therefore emphasize in this response that I unreservedly endorse the recommendations of
the report: [a] Please have it translated in all regional languages and
disseminated to all Gram Sabhas and Ward Sabhas to obtain feedback to arrive at
appropriate decisions in a down-top fashion, and [b] initiate strong
measures to address the issues of deficit in environmental governance as
highlighted in the report.
The result of ignorance in action- coronavirus halting modern civilization with huge kills of humans all over the globe.It is a synergistic effect of contaminants , destruction of habitat and destruction of the gene pool which is apparently manifesting as deadly effects of the lowly coronavirus.
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