Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel - Part I - 8. Develop sustainably – conserve thoughtfully : -

Opinion
   16/09/2018
            1402.

8. Develop sustainably – conserve thoughtfully : -

Many stakeholders have suggested that, apart from the context of provision of Central financial assistance for plan schemes, the Western Ghats Region should have a regulatory content of a go- no go nature; that certain activities would be banned within the limits of the Western Ghats, but fully permitted outside these limits. WGEEP would like to submit that we should move away from such formulae that impart inflexibility to development processes. To take a very simple example, the norm for the size of agricultural holding in which a farm house may be constructed is 2 acres throughout the state of Maharashtra. But in the hilly terrain of Mahabaleshwar, one of the existing ESAs of Western Ghats, 80% of farmers hold less than 2 acres of land. All of them have therefore been forced to stay in small, overcrowded houses in Gaothans, which have not been permitted to grow over the last 60 years, despite substantial increase in their populations. Farmers of Mahabaleshwar have therefore been requesting that the threshold for permission for a farm house be appropriately changed in their locality, to no avail. They feel particularly frustrated to see considerable construction activity of bungalows for the rich and hotels going on without much difficulty, while they see no signs of relief for themselves.

Indeed, what we see around the Western Ghats and the rest of the country may be termed ‚Development by Exclusion‛ hand in hand with ‚Conservation by Exclusion‛. Despite the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution that have devolved powers of making decisions relating to development to Panchayat Raj Institutions and Nagarpalikas, all development decisions are being thrust on the people. For instance, in Ratnagiri district several Gram Panchayats, and Panchayat Samitis, including the Ratnagiri Taluka Panchayat Samiti, have specifically passed resolutions relating to environmental issues that are also being completely ignored by the State Government. Box 1 presents a specific case of such ‚Development by Exclusion‛ in the context of development of a chemical industry in the same district.

Box 1: Development by Exclusion: Lote MIDC and pollution of Dabhol creek : -
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The experience the world over is that people, and not government or industry, have led movements to protect the environment. It is therefore important that people be vigorously inducted into protecting, managing, and monitoring the environment. In this context, the Ministry of Environment and Forests had an excellent scheme of district-level Paryavaran Vahinis. Under this scheme concerned citizens were conferred authority to monitor environmental degradation such as pollution and deforestation, and report to the District Collector, who would then enquire into the matter. The programme was very effective in districts like Dakshin Kannada during the 1990’s and the Steering Committee for Environment and Forests for the 11th Five Year Plan had strongly recommended that as part of the effort to promote partnerships, the 11th Plan should revive the programme of district-level Paryavaran Vahinis to promote a broadly participatory process of environmental monitoring and management. During the meeting with Government of Maharshtra officials in Mumbai on 30th September, 2010, Madhav Gadgil (MG) therefore enquired if there were any on-going programmes of involving the people in environmental monitoring in Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg districts. MG was informed that a similar function was being performed by a Ratnagiri District Environment Committee chaired by the Ratnagiri District Collector (which, it eventually turned out, did not exist at all), and additionally there was a very active ‘Lote Abhyas Gat’ attached to Lote MIDC, a chemical industries complex.

MG immediately contacted Ratnagiri District Collector, as well as the Lote Abhyas Gat with the help of Maharashtra State Pollution Control Board. On 5th October 2010 ,MG had a meeting with the Lote Abhyas Gat, and a field visit to the Common Effluent Treatment Plant and some surrounding areas, as well as visits to Dabhol creek and discussions with many community members. It is notable that contrary to information provided by authorities in the meeting in Mumbai, the Abhyas Gat has been totally inactive, with no meetings over more than two years. In spite of their demand, a representative of Kotavale village that has suffered maximally from pollution is not included in the Abhyas Gat. It was revealed that the CETP cannot handle the quantity of effluent it is receiving, and its functioning is highly defective. MG saw large overflows of untreated effluent from the plant going into streams serving Kotavale village. Since the situation is not being brought under control, the Sarpanch of Kotavale attempted to commit suicide by drinking the polluted stream water. He was rushed to Mumbai and saved, but there has been no abatement of pollution affecting Kotavale. People also reported that solid toxic sludge from industries was mixed with soil and dumped in the Ghat area. It is understood that many industries at Lote are pumping toxic waste into ground water through bore wells. Apparently, three such cases were brought to light, but there has been no action. Very recently, some unidentified party has dumped toxic wastes via a tanker in the Boraj Dam which is the water supply of Khed town. The town water supply had to be stopped for several weeks, but nobody has been brought to book. There has been significant decline in fish landings from Dabhol creek due to Lote chemical pollution, and severe loss of employment opportunities for members of fishing communities. With all these problems persisting all that the Pollution Control Board has done seems to be to transfer the Lote office to Chiplun, rendering any chances of effective action even more remote than before.

Not only are people not being active partners in the process of development, but their civil rights of protesting against excessive pollution levels, certainly well above legal limits, are being systematically suppressed. There had never been any violent agitation in Ratnagiri district till an activist protesting Jaitapur project was killed by a jeep, allegedly belonging to the Nuclear Power Corporation and driven by a police constable in early 2011. Yet the District Collector had promulgated Bombay Police Act 1951 Sec, 37(1)(3), prohibiting public gathering of more than five people for as many as 191 days between 28.08.07 to 21.10.09 to suppress protests against unacceptable levels of pollution, particularly from Lote MIDC.

It is reported that this industrial complex employs 11,000 people; while the local fishermen claim that the resultant pollution has rendered 20,000 people from their community jobless. With all these persistent and unrectified problems, we were informed by an MIDC officer that they are planning to set up a new Petrochemical MIDC area nearby on 550Ha.

The Indian society has rich traditions of nature conservation, and some of the best preserved remnants of indigenous vegetation of Western Ghats are in the form of Sacred Groves. Yet the official conservation efforts in the form of Protected Areas are being pursued on the assumption that it is the local people who are primarily responsible for loss of biodiversity and the highest priority should be given to excluding them. See Box 2 for such an example. It is also notable that the Forestry establishment is the only wing of the Government that refuses to work with the Panchayat Raj Institutions, with the trivial exception of the Social Forestry wing.

Box 2: Conservation by Exclusion: Soligas of BRT hills :-

BRT hills are a forest covered range in Karnataka to the east of the Nilgiris. It is the traditional homeland of Soliga tribals, who earlier practised hunting-gathering and shifting cultivation. They have protected a large sacred grove, harbouring a magnificent Michelia champaka tree. When this area was declared a Wild Life Sanctuary, Soligas could no longer hunt or practice shifting cultivation. So gathering of honey, medicinal plants and amla (Phyllanthus emblica) became the mainstay of their subsistence. A voluntary organization, Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra, has organized them effectively and helped set up a system of regulated collection, processing and marketing of forest produce. A scientific institution, ATREE, has been engaged in a study of the Soliga forest produce collection practices and their impact on resource stocks. They have come to the conclusion that these practices are entirely sustainable. The Soliga earnings had also improved because of their own processing industry. Most regrettably, the Forest Department has banned all collection of forest produce for marketing, forcing Soligas into destitution.

It is now widely accepted that development plans should not be cast in a rigid framework, but ought to be tailored to prevalent locality and time-specific conditions with full participation of local communities, a process that has been termed adaptive co-management. What should be ‘go’ and what should be ‘no go’ development options ought then to be decided on a case-by-case basis, in tune with the specific environmental and socio-economic context, and aspirations of the local communities. Such a system of adaptive co-management would marry conservation to development, and not treat them as separate, incompatible objectives. See Box 3 for a discussion of this approach.

Box 3: Adaptive Co-management :-

Adaptive co-management is an emerging approach for governance of social-ecological systems. Novelty of adaptive co-management comes from combining the iterative learning dimension of adaptive management and the linkage dimension of collaborative management in which rights and responsibilities are jointly shared. Complementarities among concepts of collaboration and adaptive management encourage an approach to governance that encompasses complexity and cross-scale linkages, and the process of dynamic learning. Adaptive co-management thus offers considerable appeal in light of the complex systems view. In this regard, adaptive co-management has been described as an emergent and self-organizing process facilitated by rules and incentives of higher levels, with the potential to foster more robust social-ecological systems. Key features of adaptive co-management include : -

 A focus on learning-by-doing
 Synthesis of different knowledge systems
 Collaboration and power-sharing among community, regional and national levels
 Management flexibility

These features can promote an evolving, place-specific governance approach in which strategies are sensitive to feedback (both social and ecological) and oriented towards system resilience and sustainability. Such strategies include dialogue among interested groups and actors (local–national), the development of complex, redundant and layered institutions, and a combination of institutional types, designs and strategies that facilitate experimentation and learning through change. Other important themes in adaptive co-management include improving evaluation of process and outcomes, additional emphasis on power, the role of social capital, and meaningful interactions and trust building as the basis for governance in social-ecological systems.

Yet we are today stuck in a system that forcibly divorces conservation from development. It ends up creating a dichotomy so that our policies at once promote reckless development in certain areas, and thoughtless conservation in other areas. In the process we constitute islands of biodiversity (and social exclusion) – the so-called Protected Areas (PAs) – in an ocean of ecological devastation outside of these PAs. As we will explore below in some detail, our insistence on ‚not a blade of grass shall be removed from PAs‛ is as inappropriate as complete disregard for pollution control laws outside of PAs. WGEEP would like to propose that we should instead attempt to develop a model of conservation and development compatible with each other encompassing the whole of the Western Ghats region, to replace the prevailing ‚Develop recklessly – conserve thoughtlessly‛ pattern with one of ‚Develop sustainably – conserve thoughtfully‛. The fine-tuning of development–conservation practices to local context that this calls for would require full involvement of local communities. To sum up, WGEEP advocates a layered, nuanced, participatory approach, so that boundaries will not be discontinuities and therefore will not be of undue significance. Hence, while we will, of course, talk of the boundaries of the Western Ghats, we plead that the pattern of adaptive co-management that we propose may also be applied to regions beyond these boundaries.

To be continued ...

OPINION :-

1.SRI MADHAV GADGIL REPORT IS BRILLIANT, TOOK TOO MUCH PAIN TO PRODUCE THIS REPORT;

2. STUPID POLITICIANS AND ALL SORTS OF MAFIA IN THE GARB OF PEOPLE DISCARDED THIS HIGHLY VALUABLE STUFF, BY MERE MOTIVE OF OBSTACLE TO LOOT;

3. THESE DEMONS AGAINST NATURE SHOULD BE CONDEMNED, AND ELIMINATED ..THEY ARE THE ENEMIES OF BHARATHAM.

JAIHIND
VANDEMATHARAM