Kasturirangan report: Bio-diversity or livelihood? Which holds the ace?

 Newskarnataka Link
Mangaluru: The central government has withdrawn its two previous notifications issued to the state government on the implementation of the Kasturirangan report and has decided to reissue the draft notification,  after the state government files its objections, for which it has extended the deadline upto  April 15th.  This gives another three months to the state government to formulate its views.

Ramanath Rai after the centre's move said,” the government has given us 3 more months to decide our stand on the project. We will collect people's opinion and inform the Central government. The cabinet committee has started collecting opinions from the people in the western ghat region”.

Earlier the state government had been given the deadline of December 26, to file its objections.  For this purpose, the state government had formed a cabinet sub-committee to study the pros and cons of Kasturirangan report in ecologically sensitive areas (ESA). This committee had sought two additional months to decide and had not sent the objection letter.

People, whose livelihood was likely to be affected by the implementation of the Kasturirangan report recommendations, have heaved a sigh of relief. 

The subcommittee as a part of its deliberations will be holding a public meeting in Mangaluru on January 27. The Dakshina Kannada District Deputy Commissioner A B Ibrahim said this in an official communiqué. The communiqué informed that the meeting will delve into all the aspects of Kasturirangan report. Discussions will be held with environmentalists, people's representatives and non-governmental organizations. Those interested in being part of the public meeting can do so by registering their names with their respective tahsildars before the meet.

Minister for Forest and Environment and Dakshina Kannada District in-charge B Ramanath Rai, Minister for Urban Development and Udupi District in-charge Vinay Kumar Sorake and Minister for Law T B Jayachandra are expected to participate in the meeting. As per the communiqué elected representatives will speak first, followed by those who have registered for the meet.

Implementation of Kasturirangan report stalled

A fierce, outright and almost unanimous rejection of the Kasturirangan report outlining a conservation strategy for the Western Ghats had virtually stalled the implementation. 

District committees have been “under pressure” from local communities and political parties opposing the idea of Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESAs), and have been unable to complete their socio-economic survey.

The report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), popularly known as the Madhav Gadgil report, and that of the High Level Working Group (HLWG), known as Kasturirangan report, have evoked opposition from all sections of the people. Both the reports were commissioned by the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) of the government of India during the tenure of the previous government.  The MoEF under pressure from the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal accepted the HLWG report. However its implementation is stuck in opposition from the affected people and their local representatives and there are valid reasons for the same.

The Western Ghats – a bio-diversity hotspot

The Western Ghats is one of the eight bio-diversity hotspots in the world. It’s not just the flora and the fauna that flourish there that make it important, but many water lifelines such as the Godavari, Nethravathi, Krishna, Vaigai, Kaveri, Kunthi and numerous other water bodies originate from the Western Ghats. 

Gadgil’s studies indicate that in the southern states of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, 40% of the original green cover has already been lost. This over a period of seventy years from 1920 to 1990 mainly in the latter half of the last decade, when Corporates mercilessly degraded and denuded the  hotspot for pecuniary gain, often encouraged by populist oriented governments across the spectrum. 

Environment consciousness rose in first decade of the current millennium, forcing the stoppage of mining of iron ore by the Kudremukh Iron ore Company Ltd, a public sector company, through a Supreme Court directive, and compelling the central government through the MOEF, to constitute the WGEEP through an order dated March 4, 2010. The committee consisted of 14 members with renowned environmentalist Prof Madhav Gadgil as chairman. 

Its terms of reference were to assess the current status of ecology of the Western Ghats region; demarcate the areas within the region which need to be notified as ecologically sensitive; make recommendations for the conservation, protection and rejuvenation of the region; suggest measures for effective implementation of the notification declaring specific areas in the region as eco-sensitive; to recommend the modalities for establishment of Western Ghats Ecology Authority; and to deal with any other relevant issues. 

The Gadgil committee held 14 meetings over one and a half years and submitted its final report on August 31, 2011to the MoEF. Sadly they did not consult the local population, people’s representatives and political parties and subsequently this omission, became the reason for its skewed recommendations.

The report was made public in March 2012 and it woke up a lot of local organizations to its impact on their people, forest wealth, and land use rights, prompting all the six state governments to criticize the report especially on the grounds that conservation methodologies suggested in the report would affect the livelihood and fundamental rights of the local residents.

Opposition does make a difference, especially if it’s concerted, persistent and all inclusive. Concerted opposition forced the MoEF to form the HLWG on August 17, 2012 under the chairmanship of famous space scientist and planning commission member Dr Kasturirangan to revisit the WGEEP report. The HLWG had 10 meetings and four field visits before it submitted its report on April 15, 2013.  They partially addressed the original lacunae of lack of local consultation, and after its submission, there was a lot of pressure from the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal to implement its recommendations, despite doubts over whether it had addressed the concerns of the local residents.

The MoEF initiated steps to implement the HLWG recommendations and declared 4,156 villages in six States (99 in Goa, 64 in Gujarat, 1576 in Karnataka, 123 in Kerala, 2159 in Maharashtra and 135 in Tamilnadu) as Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA). The idea was to impose the Indian Environment (Protection) Act on all these villages. This bureaucratic step invited widespread resistance and protest actions from the local population, which are still continuing.

Failure of the HLWG

The responsibilities given to HLWG were mainly to examine the WGEEP report in a holistic manner and to submit an action plan for effective implementation of this report. However, this time the MoEF asked the committee to approach the issue from a human point of view, and not just a conservatory approach. This would include ensuring the rights, needs and developmental aspirations of local and indigenous people, tribes, forest dwellers and other most disadvantaged sections of the local communities while balancing equitable economic and social growth with sustainable development and environmental integrity.

But the HLWG did not completely address local concerns. It made several amendments that only diluted the WGEEP recommendations, but nothing else. It also recommended whole villages as eco-sensitive areas and retained the anti-people guidelines of the WGEEP report.

The controversial recommendations that are the bone of contention:

• Land use: The most crucial recommendation creating anxiety among the local population is the following guideline in WGEEP report (vol 1, pp 41-42): “change in land use not permitted from forest to non-forest uses or agricultural to non-agricultural, except agricultural to forest (or tree crops)” except when an extension of existing settlements is needed to accommodate an increase in the local population. This means an absolute ban on developmental and construction activities, except housing. The HLWG report made no amendment to this clause. It is quite natural that people denied basic socio-economic development will be compelled to evacuate in future.  Also, no red industry will be allowed in the ESZs, while this is fine, even milk processing, meat processing, extraction of vegetable oil and hospitals also come in this category. 
• Ban on converting public land to private land: The guidelines of the WGEEP report (vol 1, p 41) say that public land cannot be converted to private land.  What of the thousands of people who have been farming and surviving since decades? These are small and marginal farmers and tribal families, who have migrated to the high ranges. They will not be able to get land rights, will not pay land tax and will never see development. 
• Ban on using forest land for non-forest purposes: The 2006 act on the rights of tribals and traditional forest dwellers allows them to cultivate the forest land on which they have depended for livelihood for generations. But a clause in the WGEEP report says: “forest land should not be used for non-forest purpose.” The preservation of paddy fields and water bodies in the entire Western Ghats area is also not addressed by either of the reports. 
• Phasing out of the use of chemical fertilizers: The WGEEP report recommends phasing out of the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides within a certain period. The HLWG is silent on this. While organic cultivation is the best way forward, prohibition will negatively affect agricultural production and the income of small and marginal families. 
• No monoculture plantations: This recommendation of the WGEEP report, says “no monoculture plantation of exotics like eucalyptus; existing plantations of such exotics should be replaced by planting endemic species or allowing area to revert to grassland where it was originally grassland.” This essentially has an impact on Tea coffee and rubber plantations and this is a serious worry for tens of thousands of plantation workers apart from the plantation owners. 
• Identification and demarcation of eco-sensitive areas: The identification and demarcation of ESAs in HLWG report is unscientific, and no survey was conducted to identify such areas. Village borders have been taken ESA boundaries. Aerial surveys have mistakenly marked plantation areas as forests. HLWG has declared numerous heavily populated habitats as ESAs though the suggested criterion is a population density below 100 persons per sq km. 
• Lack of an action plan: The action plan enumerated in the HLWG has no specific recommendations for allocation of a special fund for promoting organic cultivation. It only has a fund for forest and environment conservation. It indicates a lack of concern for the local residents and farmers and a mechanical approach to conservation.    Both the reports are also silent on the human animal conflict. Segregation of Human and Animal habitats is the way forward. 
• Local reviewing authority: According to the WGEEP, the Gram Sabha is the local decision making authority in respect of implementation of the conservation guidelines, but has conferred no statutory authority on them. They are also subject to the pressures of the land owning class in the gram sabhas.

Most development reports in India are written by bureaucrats in a bureaucratic manner – with internal consultations rather than external. Further they often conform to the appointing authorities’ agenda. These two reports follow the same pattern and need deeper consultations with the affected persons, if a balance between protection of the people’s livelihood and conservation of the environment is to be found.  This is the need of the hour, or both the bio diversity and livelihoods that we seek to preserve will become extinct.