Hawking our habitats
Ashish Kothari, Hindustan Times
May 29, 2011
The two most important national level
committees responsible for wildlife conservation
in India are increasingly being turned into
rubber stamps for whatever officialdom wants
done. The National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) has
become a forum to greenwash a host of
‘development’ projects that threaten wildlife
habitats, while the National Tiger Conservation
Authority (NTCA) continues to steamroller a
blinkered model of conservation. In both, civil
society members have been reduced to either
ineffective dissent, or silent complicity.
A meeting of the NBWL Standing Committee on
April 25, chaired by the minister of state for
environment and forests Jairam Ramesh, dealt
with nearly 60 infrastructure and other projects
in/around wildlife habitats in two hours. About
30 of the agenda items were sent to members two
days before the meeting, while the notification
setting up the Standing Committee states that
agenda items must be sent to members two weeks
in advance.
Dissent from NGO members regarding projects
likely to have negative impacts was reportedly
brushed aside by the Chair. Subsequent dissent
notes were, however, included in the minutes,
though they were posted online without waiting
for members’ comments.
The NBWL has faced governance problems for
years. A number of crucial conservation issues,
like mining in wildlife habitats, declaration of
eco-sensitive areas among others have not been
taken up in the last three or four meetings.
While the MoEF insists that that stringent
conditions are imposed to minimise damage from
developmental projects, it is well aware of its
abysmal record in enforcing compliance to such
conditions.
Research based on RTI data obtained by
colleagues in Kalpavriksh revealed that of the
over 6,000 projects given clearance, officers
can check on them once every three to four
years. Conditional clearance is a colossal fraud
on the nation.
The NTCA suffers from similar problems. Its
meetings are few and far between (the last two
were in January 2010 and March 2011). Minutes
regularly do not reflect full discussions,
leaving out inconvenient or uncomfortable issues
taken up by non-official members.
The minutes of the March 2011 meeting do not
reflect the minister’s own observations that the
Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Sanctuary (BRTS) was
improperly notified as a tiger reserve by the
Karnataka state government, without waiting for
final approval from NTCA.
It is obvious that these Committees are facing
serious crises, with NGO members being forced to
accept decisions arrived at by powerful
individuals in the MoEF. While some have
protested, many are not even raising their
voice.
If civil society is silenced or resorts to
self-censorship, the Committees cannot do a good
job of conserving India’s wildlife.
(Ashish Kothari is associated with
Kalpavriksh, Pune. The views expressed by the
author are personal)
