New book on Indian conservation

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Monday, November 05, 2007

Conservation of the people, by the people, for the people…. so help me

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Making Conservation Work

Eds. Ghazala Shahabuddin and Mahesh Rangarajan

Permanent Black, Delhi

298 pages

Hard cover. Rs. 595

 

The prosaic title notwithstanding, the essays in this book pack a punch. The

editors, Shahabuddin and Rangarajan, set the stage in the Introduction by

examining what caused the Sariska debacle. Readers will remember that this

was the park where the tiger was declared locally extinct in early 2005. It

provided ammunition to two diametrically opposed camps to " prove " their

arguments. One camp claimed it was the presence of villagers in the park

that was detrimental to the tigers while the other accused the colonial

mindset of Indian wildlife laws and policy.

 

Sariska was a pampered park; being close to the nerve centre of Delhi, it

received a lot of funds and VIP attention. It also had more guards per

square kilometer than almost any other park in the country. Villagers living

within the park were recipients of largess, not available to inhabitants of

most other reserves. It had everything going for it and yet the tigers

vanished. In the flurry of accusations that followed, the Tiger Task Force

was set up, and its report was alternately trashed and celebrated by

conservationists of both camps. However, they were unanimous in their

criticism of the state's manner of functioning. And true to form, the state

ignored the recommendations of the Task Force, revived the

relocation-of-villagers policy (which is doomed to failure by its woeful

inadequacy), proposed reintroducing tigers from other parks and pretends

that the crisis is only a minor setback for conservation. In this

contentious atmosphere, sharing the experiences of the contributors of the

book opens new vistas of wildlife conservation and governance.

 

Perhaps the most interesting article in the book is 'Threatened Forests,

Forgotten People' by Aparajita Datta of the Nature Conservation Foundation

(NCF). Datta sets out the political dynamics of conservation in Namdapha

National Park in Arunachal Pradesh. The Lisu tribals are caught in the far

corner of the state sandwiched between the park on one side and the

international border with Myanmar on the other. Accused of being latter day

encroachers from Myanmar they enjoy no citizenship rights or tribal status.

Recognizing that the basic needs of the people in this remote corner of

India have to be addressed first, NCF supports six kindergarten

schoolteachers thereby ensuring the education of 330 Lisu children. Malaria

takes a heavy toll and a patient seeking medical help has to walk for seven

days to reach a doctor. As a first step one Lisu tribal has been trained as

a healthcare provider. In tandem, NCF biologists have also conducted

wildlife surveys, extended the range of mammals previously known only in

neighbouring countries and lobbied with the Lisu against traditional hunting

practices. Initiatives such as this, which tie conservation with solutions

to existential struggles, go far in salvaging the vitiated relationship

between people and the state.

 

Other articles deal with similarly alternative approaches to conservation of

the oceans, deserts, and forests by incorporating local people into the

equation. Interestingly, the NCF is involved with another innovative

approach - restoring the rainforests of the Valparai plateau of Tamil Nadu.

Collaborating with the management of the various tea estates, Mudappa and

Raman have planted numerous rainforest species on degraded private lands

that are unfit for tea cultivation thereby providing corridors for animals

such as elephants, lion-tailed macaques, leopards, and hornbills among

others. Not enough of this kind of restoration is being undertaken in the

country and yet anyone with a bit of initiative and effort can contribute

towards enhancing the quality of habitat available for plants and wildlife.

 

In other essays, Kartik Shanker elaborates on an alliance of fishworker

organizations and conservation groups that are working for sea turtle (and

fish) conservation in Orissa, Priya Das explores participatory conservation

in Kailadevi Sanctuary in Rajasthan while Nitin Rai examines the economics

of harvesting Garcinia fruits in Karnataka - evidence that conservation need

not stop with creating reserves and making sure no one touches the wildlife

within. Two other chapters critique the current forest management policy by

focusing on Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary and Sariska.

 

Crucial to conservation success is political will. It is clear that in a

democracy where the stake to power is dependent on appealing to the

majority, conservationists have to redress their approach if they are to

achieve their goals. Otherwise the majority of the voting public does not

care, or worse, sees conservation as an elitist preoccupation of the middle

class. This is the biggest shortfall of the conservationist agenda. While

this book manages to bring conservation concerns and issues to the reading

public, it is a pity that the standard of writing is uneven – while some

articles are exciting, a couple are so dreary they are hard to get through.

 

Ghazala Shahabuddin is an ecologist at the Environmental Studies Group of

the Council for Social Development, Delhi. She has monitored habitat

fragmentation, people's utilization of forest resources and its impact on

the biodiversity of Sariska. Mahesh Rangarajan is Professor of History at

the University of Delhi. He is the co-editor of Permanent Black's series

called Nature, Culture, Conservation to which this book is a worthy

addition.