PROTECTED AREA UPDATE
No. 34 & 35 February 2002

News and Information from protected areas in India and South Asia

EDITORIAL
Obituary: Anil Agarwal

NEWS FROM INDIAN STATES

Andhra Pradesh
 

NATIONAL NEWS FROM INDIA

SOUTH ASIA

INTERNATIONAL

OPPURTUNITIES

WHAT'S AVAILABLE?

UPCOMING

PA UPDATE MATTERS

THE NATIONAL WILDLIFE ACTION PLAN

EDITORIAL

The Indian Board for Wildlife

The Indian Board for Wildlife (IBWL) finally met after five years. ThevNational Wildlife Action Plan (NWAP) too was approved and released. So arev we in for a new era in India's wildlife history? Hard to say, for two reasons. One, some of the bold pronouncements of the IBWL and the NWAP need to be followed up with hard actions on the ground. Then there are also, some contradictory messages that are emanating from these processes, which need
resolution.

Parts of the Prime Minister's speech at the IBWL meeting, and the IBWL statement itself, are excellent. In particular, the message against destructive projects in wildlife habitats is clearer than ever before. Of course we will need to push hard to see something happening on the ground. A test case could well be the renewal of the mining lease in the Kudremukh National Park in Karnataka. While the State Government is inclined to renew the mining lease for only five years, the Centre seems to want to extend it to 20 years. We have to wait and watch what finally happens. In any case we do think that the PM and the IBWL needs to be congratulated for the strong
stand they have taken.

However old biases continue, particularly with respect to the other critical issue that needs to be dealt with if conservation in India has to succeed: the neglect and the injustice meted out to thousands of resident
communities whose lives are delicately linked to the natural resource base for survival. Para 4 of the IBWL statement, for e.g., says "protecting interests of the poor and tribals living around protected areas" (emphasis
ours). Next, it says, "access to minor forest produce, outside of national parks and sanctuaries". Now why on earth are we trying to hide the 3-4 million people who are inside protected areas? Does the IBWL seriously
expect them all to move out to eke a living? And that too in a country where land is at a premium, and the government has been consistently unsuccessful in resettling more than one or two villages?
We urban conservationists zealously protect our own turf when it is threatened. For our water and electricity, highways and expressways, we scream blue murder when the government does not deliver. At the same time we
have no problems denying even the basic resources for survival to people who have lived for generations in an area.

Of course, this is not at all to say that all communities are conservationists, nor that villagers are any less prone to commercial and industrial pressures than anyone else. But these issues too cannot be ignored, just as the IBWL statement has done by only talking of people outside PAs.

The longer we hide these issues under the carpet, the trickier the problem will become. More and more communities will turn against wildlife conservation, and get more and more politicians on their side to demand denotification. No amount of guns and guards can protect wildlife habitats if local people decide to turn against them. And we are not even talking of the fundamental issues of social justice that are involved. Similar is the case with Para 10 of the IBWL statement. While there is no doubt that poaching and encroachment by outsiders and / or for commercial purposes should be dealt with strictly, it is unfair to render all traditional practices as "illegal" with a single stroke of the pen. If access to Non Timber Forest Produce (NTFP) is to be allowed only outside PAs, the Chenchu adivasi inside Srisailam Tiger Reserve or the Soliga tribal inside Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Sanctuary, could now be imprisoned or fined for picking up a fallen twig or collecting some honey. City-bred conservationists, on the other hand, will continue to zoom in and out of these PAs regardless of the impacts that these activities, and our own growing consumerism, is causing inside wildlife habitats. Can we really hope to save India's wildlife by making enemies of all these millions of people?

While the Wild Life Act has undoubtedly helped to save many wildlife habitats, so have the myriad mass movements against big dams, commercial trawling, mining, roads and railways, and other destructive projects. Indeed, IBWL's pronouncements against the industrial destruction of wildlife habitats will be ineffective, without the support of such mass movements. Yet it risks alienating them, if it continues to advocate an exclusionary
vision vis-à-vis people inside protected areas.

Intriguingly even the speech by the Prime Minister at the IBWL does acknowledge this. He actually talks of people in and around protected areas, and even suggests that legal changes be considered if their involvement in conservation is to be made effective. Why then does the Resolution of the IBWL itself look so different on this aspect?

It is time that the IBWL accepted the reality of people's interaction with natural resources inside PAs, and boldly strode in the direction that many other tropical countries have already taken: of centrally involving local people in conceiving, managing, and receiving benefits from protected areas.

Kalpavriksh
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908 Deccan Gymkhana
Pune 411004
Tel / Fax: 91 20 5654239
Email: kvriksh@vsnl.com
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