The turtle wars : Greenpeace versus Tata

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*Below belt? Green group uses Nano to hit Tata on Orissa turtles*

*6 Apr 2009, 0018 hrs IST, Amit Bhattacharya, TNN*

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*Text:* **

** *NEW DELHI: When Tatas finally launched the Nano late last month,

something else went piggyback riding on the wave of global attention the car

was * ***getting. On March 23, the day of the launch, full-page ads

appeared in two international papers with a prominent picture of the 'cheap'

car. The ad had nothing to do with Nano - it was a high profile attempt by

NGO Greenpeace to get international attention to bear on Olive Ridley

turtles.

 

The motive of Greenpeace was obvious: to pressure Tata Group chairman, Ratan

Tata, into stopping work at the Dhamra Port coming up in Orissa, about 25km

from Gahirmatha, one of the two mass nesting sites of the Olive Ridleys on

the state's coastline.

 

It was one of the costliest campaigns yet mounted to 'save' the turtles,

claiming the port was threatening to take the Olive Ridleys closer to

extinction. It raised the alarm - ever since dredging activity began two

years ago to clear the approach to the port, the turtles hadn't come for

mass nesting at Gahirmatha.

 

In a dramatic twist, even as the ad appeared in Financial Times and

International Herald Tribune, tens of thousands of female turtles made their

way to Gahirmatha beach for nesting. According to Siddhanta Das, conservator

of forests, Bhubaneswar circle, the mass nesting at Gahirmatha started on

March 21 and continued till March 24. In these four days, around 1.7 lakh

turtles had nested at the site, Das said.

 

" The advertisement was in bad taste inasmuch as it carried wrong

information, " said Santosh K Mohapatra, CEO of Dhamra Port Company Limited,

a 50:50 joint venture of Tata Steel and Larsen & Toubro. Greenpeace changed

its tack - it claimed the nesting did not mean that the turtles were any

less threatened.

 

Not surprisingly, Greenpeace's campaign has again triggered the debate on

whether extreme positions such as these should be invoked when there's

little evidence to support it. In the case of the Olive Ridleys, such

positioning by a section of conservationists goes back over 30 years.

 

As turtle expert Kartik Shanker, assistant professor at IISc, Bangalore,

puts it: " In 1978, T A Davis and Rajesh Bedi wrote about the imminent

extinction of Olive Ridleys in Orissa. Jack Frazier (pioneering American

turtle specialist) wrote then of the dangers of crying wolf. He was right;

the Ridleys did not go extinct. Of course, some drastic conservation actions

were required in the early 1980s. More recently, another scientist, Nicholas

Mrosovsky, wrote of the dangers of hype. "

 

Shanker argues that invoking the threat of extinction takes the focus away

from long-term conservation strategies which would be more helpful in

preserving the species.

 

Most conservationists fear that the upcoming port could adversely affect the

Olive Ridley turtles and their nesting areas. At the other end of the

divide, pro-development proponents argue that the port will bring

much-needed development to a backward region.

 

On their part, Tata and DPCL say they are sensitive to the ecological

importance of the area. " We have not only done our due diligence, we have

engaged reputed institutions to constantly monitor the impact of

construction and dredging in addition to taking scientific advice from the

International Union for Conservation of Nature during the construction. IUCN

is also preparing a comprehensive environment management plan for the

operation phase, " Mohapatra said.

 

Some green groups allege that IUCN, a respected international organization,

is being used by DPCL to " greenwash " the port project. Ashish Fernandes of

Greenpeace, who is heading the NGO's Dhamra campaign, said, " IUCN's role is

limited to mitigation. We demand that work at the port stop and an

independent group of scientists study the issue. "

 

When talks between DPCL and green groups broke down in February, both sides

had agreed on the independent study. DPCL said it was ready to stop work for

certain periods if the scientists required it. The environmentalists

insisted on complete stoppage of work. " There's no point in getting an

independent study commissioned on our own, as this too will be contested, "

says Mohapatra.

 

With the current level of trust deficit between the two sides, what's fast

disappearing is a middle ground which could possibly have accommodated the

interests of all, including the turtles. *