Wildlife is on the brink...

The Hindu Sunday Magazine, 01 November 2009
http://www.hindu.com/mag/2009/11/01/stories/2009110150170500.htm
CONSERVATION

Wildlife is on the brink…

PANKAJ SEKHSARIA

… and it is high time we took a critical look at our conservation realities and policies.

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Most that share landscapes with wildlife, for instance, live extremely low impact lives yet they pay the biggest cost for conservation.

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PHOTO: PANKAJ SEKHSARIA

Question of survival: Tribal settlements in Orissa’s Simlipal Biosphere Reserve.

If there is one dominating sense about the fate of wildlife in this country, it is that of ‘the end’. The wiping out of the tiger from the Sariska and Panna Tiger Reserves has been headline news; poaching and trading in wildlife parts con tinues unabated; human wildlife conflict — be it with carnivores like leopards or tigers, large mammals like elephants or smaller animals like wild boar, deer or monkeys — is seriously on the rise; lakes, rivers and other wetlands are either being dammed, poisoned or encroached upon; climate change threatens to change the world in an unprecedented manner and as a combined consequence wildlife numbers are dwindling precariously and many species of birds, animals and plants stand dangerously close to the precipice of extinction.

The Forest Rights Act

An important new twist was added to wildlife conservation debates a couple of years ago with the enactment of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, popularly known as the Forest Rights Act (FRA). The debate over this act has been volatile and the opposition, particularly from a section of wildlife conservationists and former forest officers, has been and continues to be strong. A lot has been written about these concerns and strong affirmation came from a rather unlikely source around a year ago. A report in Newsweek (“India’s missing tigers”, May 5, 2008) took the argument to an unexpected extreme when it argued that ‘democracy and economic development’ were driving the tiger to extinction in India.

Many might actually agree with this articulation, but even a cursory analysis will reveal that the conclusions are as ill-informed as they are short sighted. An entire argument cannot be built on the analysis of and comment on just one piece of recent legislation in the country: the FRA. The law is a recent one and its implementation, if it is happening at all, has just about begun. While fears about forest and wildlife loss may indeed be justified, selectively wiping away history and placing the responsibility for the tiger’s demise at the door of this one legislation and one set of people is not only irresponsible but also can be counter-productive.

Particularly so since because one aspect of India’s conservation history — the role of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi — continues to be repeatedly invoked, like in the Newsweek piece. A whole generation of wildlife enthusiasts and conservationists believe, and with good reason, that Indira Gandhi ensured that Indian wildlife still has some hope. She was the architect of critical legislations and frameworks that certainly helped protect wildlife and her personal interest and intervention like in the case of Silent Valley in Kerala ensured that many critical habitats were saved.

It is a legacy we cannot deny or wish away, but we also need to ask whether we can keep hanging on to the past? Our socio-political-economic-cultural realities have changed drastically since her time. It is the same nation and yet it is different . Wildlife conservation today, like anything else, has to be placed within this rapidly changing context. It is crucial to recognise that the same wildlife conservation policies will not succeed today just because they did in a different era. If she were alive today, Mrs. Gandhi would perhaps have agreed.

There is also a whole new ‘post-Indira Gandhi’ generation of wildlife biologists involved in cutting edge research across wild India. Many of their formulations of problems and solutions are extremely nuanced and far more representative of realities on the ground. They need to be asked and they need to be listened to.

Condemning the most vulnerable

It is no one’s case that wildlife conservation is easy. The challenges are immense and no one but the most optimistic will argue that the future for our wildlife is bright and hopeful. However, blaming the poor and the tribal; demanding their displacement to protect wildlife; seeking stricter and military-like protection is the wrong place to start. By doing this we are also ignoring many other realities. Most of the communities that share landscapes with wildlife, for instance, live extremely low impact lives and yet they are made to pay the biggest cost for conservation.

It is also not a coincidence that innumerable people’s agitations across the country today are fighting policies and projects (big dams, large scale mining, increased industrialisation) that predate on the basic survival of forest and land dependant communities. Neither is it a coincidence that many of these are important habitats that support a great diversity of threatened flora and fauna. It is as important that we recognise this overlap as it is for us to recognise that both communities and wildlife are, together, losing this battle. Nothing — be it the laws and the courts, the politicians and the bureaucrats or the media and the wildlife conservationists — are able to help them.

Hope and the FRA

Increased mining across the country, for instance, has been one of the most significant sources of concern for its impact on forests, tribal communities and important wildlife populations. In an ironic twist now, it is being suggested that the FRA might actually be the only hope for preventing mining in forest and wildlife rich areas. Efforts towards this end are already being made in states like Orissa and in particular in the Niyamgiri hills where the Dongaria Kondh Tribal community itself is fighting to save the forests. Additional hope has been kindled following the July 30, 2009 notification of the MoEF stating the forest land diversion for non-forest purposes should ensure compliance with the provisions of the FRA.

In this larger context then, it comes across as completely unfair to argue that rights for the poor, the marginalised and the historically dis-privileged necessarily means the demise of our wildlife? Can we turn the question and wonder if, in fact, “it is not too much democracy but too little of it that lies at the root our wildlife crisis?” That a more empowered people might actually fight better and more successfully? We don’t have the answers today; what we do have is the choice of which question we will ask.

Bauxite prospecting pits on the Galikonda plateau in the Ananthgiri Hills of Andhra Pradesh. Mining is one of the biggest threats to tribal communities, forests and wildlife across large parts of the country (Photo: Pankaj Sekhsaria)

Tiger Vs Tribe

The forests stand a chance of surviving India's insatiable growth with the Forest Rights Act, says PANKAJ SEKHSARIA

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 3, Dated Jan 24, 2009

http://www.tehelka. com/story_ main41.asp? filename= cr240109tiger_ vs_tribe. asp

IF A list were to be drawn of the most discussed and debated legislations in recent times, The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Rights (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, known popularly as the Forest Rights Act, would surely be amongst the top. The intensity of the discussions and polarised nature of the debates that preceded the enactment of this law and continue even now, after it has been notified, has been noteworthy.

The Act allows:

• A family can own up to four hectares of land that is under occupation or cultivation, subject to meeting other relevant criteria

• A greater role and empowerment of Gram Sabha in determining claims, managing forests it has traditionally conserved, checking processes destructive of forestdwellers' habitats, and protecting traditional knowledge

• Greater livelihood security for traditional forestdwellers who have been denied tenure

• Displacement and relocation only by consent

• Right to development facilities with a limit of 1 ha of maximum 75 trees density per project (in case of which, Forest Conservation Act will not apply)
Photo: AK Varun

The Act seeks its legitimacy when the preamble lays out its purpose as 'correcting the historical injustices meted out to forest-dwelling communities' . A wide spectrum of people including tribal rights groups and activists have welcomed the act. Those opposing the act — a significant section of wildlife protection NGOs, forest bureaucracy and prominent voices in the media, have vehemently argued that the Act and its implementation will drive the final nail into the coffin of India's rapidly shrinking forest cover and beleaguered wildlife. It has been pitched as the ultimate 'tiger vs. tribal' clash — where the tiger (and by extension other wildlife too) will certainly lose and the tribal, in whose name this is being done, will only end up a puppet in the hands of powerful and vested interests.

Those who have taken a relatively neutral position on the Act have also expressed their concerns about certain provisions. For example, December 2005 was made the cut-off date for accepting claims to ownership of lands. They have pointed out that there will be challenges in determining genuine rights. One also can't ignore the possibility of forest areas getting fragmented in the name of development activity such as roads, health centres and transmission lines. The larger fear of vested interests misusing the Act too is justified. Yet, it does seem unfair to put all the causes of India's forest destruction in the basket of this newly-enacted legislation, or at the door of the communities that are expected to benefit from it.

India is a country of more than a billion people of which the tribal population accounts for about 10 percent. These and other similar communities have been displaced, often brutally, from their ancestral forests, fields and livelihoods to make way for one big project after another — dams, mines, urban expansion and infrastructure projects. Time and again, when they resisted, they have been physically assaulted and even killed by state forces meant to protect them. Kashipur, Jagatsinghpur and Nandigram are only few instances.In such a huge country, then, with so many points of views and importantly, so many stakes on resources, it seems strange that many conservationists attribute the problems of forests, conservation of wildlife to impoverished and marginalised tribals.

CONSERVATION IN India appears to have a blind spot when it comes to tribal rights. Thousands of hectares of productive lands are being designated as Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Traditional tribal lands, many of which are thickly forested and home to a range of wildlife, are allocated to mining interests and huge dams that drown pristine forests in the biodiversity hotspots of the Western Ghats and the Eastern Himalayas. Across the landscape, infrastructure projects continue to cut through forested areas. This is little more than an indicative list of the kind of pressures and threats faced by some of India's richest forest areas and the people that live there. The laws, courts, politicians, bureaucrats, the media and the wildlife conservationists are unable to help prevent this onslaught. Tribal communities, our forests and wildlife are at the receiving end today of a development paradigm that is rolling on like a juggernaut, brooking no opposition. The most optimistic will argue that the Forest Rights Act indeed shows us a way.

In any case, field results to the implementation of Act have been a mixed bag. According to a Press Release issued by the Central Government in November 2008, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) has released Rs 22.6 crores as a grant to states requiring financial assistance to implement this law. The states of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tripura and Rajasthan had received large numbers of claims and some had even started distributing title deeds. As of September 30, Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh distributed 5000, 59548 and 4186 pattas respectively. However, the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Daman and Diu are yet to even appoint nodal officers, which is a basic requirement for implementation. There have also been unverified reports of deforestation and encroachment from different parts of Gujurat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh due to misuse of the Act.

It is important to bear in mind that the Forest Rights Act does not give just rights and land to the people, it also empowers them to conserve forests and wildlife. In the Karlapat Wildlife Sanctuary, local communities from Orissa, empowered and encouraged by rights accorded to them by the Act, seized three truckloads of timber from the residence Forest Range Officer in September 2008. Earlier, villagers said, they had failed to curb timber smuggling as they didn't have any right or say in the management of resources inside the sanctuary. It provides another handle to battle against some of the hugely destructive so called 'development' projects. The Act has already been used (unsuccessfully so far) in attempting to stop mining of bauxite in the thickly forested and sacred Niyamgiri mountains of Dongaria Kond tribe in Orissa. Maybe there will be success in the future; maybe the Act will help the millions of marginalised feel secure and empowered once again; maybe it will give them the confidence to resist and keep alive the possibilities of parallel worlds and cosmologies.

(Pankaj Sekhsaria is the editor of The Protected Area Update, a wildlife and conservation newsletter from Kalpavriksh)