A more balanced approach to
conservation and livelihoods is urgently required since the
current one is alienating local people, says ASHISH KOTHARI
Even as the tiger crisis makes the headlines, conservationists
should be doing all they can to garner greater public support
for wildlife conservation. Instead, we are making many more
enemies.
Across the country in dozens of sites, the fragile livelihoods
that communities living within forests have carved out for
themselves are being snatched away by insensitive conservation
laws and programmes. The people, who have for centuries
considered forests their mother, are being alienated from them.
Forest fires
In March this year, there were reports of widespread forest
fires in the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary (BRT
WLS), in Karnataka. Once famous as the hideout of Veerappan, BRT
WLS is a stronghold of the elephant and other wildlife, as also
home to a few thousand Soliga adivasis. Newspaper reports cited
forest officials blaming these adivasis for the fires,
suggesting that they were probably taking out their anger on the
government for having banned collection of non-timber forest
produce (NTFP).
An investigation by Kalpavriksh revealed that indeed the Soliga
adivasis were angry and upset. The ban on collection of produce
like amla (gooseberry), medicinal plants, honey, and lichen, had
hit them badly. In some cases such prod uce comprised over 60
per cent of their income, apart from their own use for food,
health, housing, and other requirements.
Gauramma, an elder of Kaneri Colony, a Soliga settlement, had
this to say: “Ever since we have been stopped from collecting
forest produce, we are in a desperate situation. We used to have
two full meals a day, now even one is difficult to get.” She and
her husband now migrate out of the sanctuary to work, earning a
meagre amount as labour in the fields of non-adivasis.
Our investigation found that the Soligas could not be blamed for
most of the forest fires. However, the alienation caused by the
NTFP ban led to a lack of interest in reporting fires or helping
the Forest Department to douse them, as was the case earlier.
Additionally, local researchers reported that outsiders had
chopped down several dozen amla (gooseberry) trees in the WLS.
In previous years, they would have been stopped by the Soligas
who had a stake in protecting the trees. Clearly, the NTFP ban
is not only causing widespread impoverishment and misery, but
also backfiring on conservation itself. This will intensify if
the anger among the Soligas grows, and if, as some local social
workers fear, “Naxalite” groups active in nearby areas gain a
foothold among the disgruntled adivasis.
BRT WLS is not an isolated example. A recent study revealed that
thousands of families in various protected areas of Orissa have
suffered a similar fate. In Baisipalli and Satkosia Sanctuaries,
the ban on NTFP collection has reduced already thin earnings, by
50 to 90 per cent. Many families are migrating to find work,
with serious impact on social life and greater chances of
exploitation. The government has provided no alternatives.
This is an issue of grave constitutional and human rights
violation, as the right to life can only be sustained if access
to basic livelihood resources is ensured.
At the heart of the issue is Section 29 of the Wild Life
(Protection) Act 2003, which permits the extraction of forest
produce only as a means of wildlife management. Such produce is
to go to local people, but only if the extraction is for
“personal bona fide” and not for “commercial” purposes.
When conservationists in New Delhi formulated this provision,
they undoubtedly had in mind large-scale industrial extraction
of bamboo, timber, and NTFP, which are serious threats to
wildlife. But, by providing no definitions to the term
“commercial”, they also dealt a blow to small-scale
community-based traditional collection of forest produce.
Interpretations
Adding to the crisis is a Supreme Court order. In February 2000,
the Court directed that all states were required to refrain from
ordering any removal of “dead, diseased, dying or wind fallen
trees, drift wood and grasses, etc from any National Park or
Game Sanctuary…”
Subsequent to this, the Union Ministry of Environment and
Forests (MoEF) in 2003 and the Centrally Empowered Committee of
the Supreme Court in 2004 greatly expanded the interpretation of
this order by asking all State Governments to cease any further
enjoyment of rights within protected areas, without central
permission.
This over-zealous interpretation, coupled with the language of
Section 29 of the WLPA, has prompted many State Governments into
the kind of action mentioned above, mostly in the last year or
two.
In the case of BRT WLS, the Deputy Conservator of Forests (DCF)
in charge of the Sanctuary, Dixit Kumar, argued in 2004 that
stopping NTFP collection would create suffering and backfire on
conservation. He said that basic livelihood activities should be
considered “bona fide” and not “commercial”.
This is an argument that State Governments could have used to
continue NTFP collection. Of course there are many areas where
even local forest use may be ecologically damaging but, in
hundreds of initiatives across India, communities have shown
that they can adopt restrictions and regulations to make it
sustainable, especially with government or NGO help. Ironically,
in BRT WLS, scientists have shown that the NTFP extraction is
already within sustainable limits… the last place a ban was
justified.
Integrate livelihood
There is a crying need for a more balanced approach to
conservation and livelihoods. The Wild Life Act is a valuable
law, one of the few standing in the way of wholesale destruction
of our natural ecosystems. But its proponents must accept that
some of its provisions, and interpretations of these by the
courts, are archaic and against the interests of conservation
itself. Refusal to accept this has meant that human rights
activists have become increasingly strident in their demands.
Indeed, if conservationists had integrated livelihood concerns
as part of conservation policy over the last few decades,
adivasi activists may never have had to push for separate forest
rights legislation.
As it now stands, the enactment of the Scheduled Tribes and
Other Traditional Forest-Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights)
Act 2006 is likely to have very mixed results, with some
substantial gains by adivasis and forests, and some disastrous
losses.
Why many conservationists are blind to this reality is baffling.
Why can’t we see the widespread hostility generated, creating
situations where it is much harder to protect critical tiger
populations?
Why would forest-dwelling communities report poachers and fires
to forest officials when all they have received is suffering?
Conversely, can’t we see that most communities would not support
poaching if their basic needs are being ensured by conservation
programmes, if we help strengthen their long-term stake in
protecting ecosystems and wildlife?
One needs only to look at what has happened in a handful of
sites where officials have taken such an approach. At Periyar
Tiger Reserve, communities (including hardcore poachers) have
been aided with better marketing facilities for their
agricultural produce, and alternative livelihoods such as
ecotourism. In turn they actively patrol the forests and report
untoward incidents. Both livelihoods and conservation are
strengthened.
In BRT WLS itself, the availability of participatory monitoring,
intense scientific research, Soliga traditions of conservation,
and active NGOs provide an ideal situation for collaborative
protected area management. Such initiatives are happening across
the world but here, in India, we remain blinkered by outdated
western conservation visions, which the West itself is
discarding.
The writer is a member of Kalpavriksh Environmental Action
Group.