By Patricia Mukhim
Why would they bother about carbon footprints when the wealth they make from timber in the region is invested in stock markets elsewhere? Why would timber merchants care if the Northeast loses its bio-diversity and suffers the ravages of climate change?
They do not live here to suffer the consequences, do they? It is the ordinary mortal who has had a long and symbiotic relation with nature and who has been the “unofficial” custodian of forest wealth and bears the brunt of unseasonal rains leading to flash floods and also drought.
One of the commonest excuses given by the Meghalaya department of environment and forests (and other states that have autonomous councils created by the Fifth/Sixth Schedules) for not being able to contain large-scale deforestation is that they only look after four per cent of forest land while the rest falls under district councils.
If that is so, then do we need such a top-heavy bureaucracy in the forest department which is the equivalent of those functioning in others states where 100 per cent of forests are under the direct supervision of the department? What is the justification of having so many rangers and high officials if they keep their eyes closed when truckloads of timber pass under their noses and because the forests from where the trees are pilfered are not under their jurisdiction?
For too long the forest department has played fast and loose and led us up the garden path. Some of the most venal acts of cleaning up forests have indeed happened under their active connivance. Sample this. The son of a senior forest official (who was at one time also in charge of the Forest Development Corporation of Meghalaya) is a timber contractor in the same department and has an ongoing flourishing business with the corporation. When a stink was raised at this strange arrangement and the resultant felling of timber in large stretches of forests in the Garo Hills, the then chief secretary ordered an enquiry.
This indicted several forest officials, including the then FDC managing director. Sadly, this enquiry was a wasted exercise. It is now a dead document waiting to be buried in the chief secretary’s office.
Meghalaya has a peculiar penchant for ferro-alloy industries although it is far from being an iron-producing state. This industry guzzles up both power and charcoal. As a result, the state is now woefully short on power and its forests are being systemically cleaned up to provide trees for charcoal production. People have used charcoal for cooking and heating for centuries. Until such time it was a sustainable activity. Now, because of the economy of scale, charcoal prices have shot up, depriving the poor who cannot afford a cooking gas connection and find kerosene too expensive.
So rampant is the deforestation in Meghalaya that recently an environmental NGO – the Meghalaya Environmental Social Organisation — wrote to the state forest department in August this year drawing its attention to the destruction of forests and the environmental consequences thereof. Failing to get any response from the department, the NGO went to Delhi and met Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh with a memorandum seeking his immediate intervention. Ramesh assured the group he would order an enquiry into the matter.
Funnily, the forest department had, two years ago, banned the production of charcoal in Meghalaya. But this order turned out to be a paper tiger. Nobody even bothered to read it, much less adhere to it.
There are two issues here that need to be understood. The forest department’s self-proclaimed justification about not having control over 96 per cent of forest land under it is literally taken by forest owners as a licence to plunder. Why should those private owners of forests obey the diktat of the forest department? Interestingly, the role of the district councils – major stakeholders in forests – has never been adequately understood.
The state government has never included them at the time of formulating policies on environment and forests. The councils live in a separate orbit that is neither here nor there. They are neither intimately connected with the communities and their activities, nor do they have any kind of working relationship with the state government. This makes them stand-alone entities with absolutely no accountability or responsibility.
Whether or not they are still needed is a big question mark because they have apparently failed to deliver any form of governance. Their only raison d’etre is that they are custodians of tribal culture. But do we need an institution to safeguard our culture and customary practices? Don’t people themselves do that better? And if 96 per cent of our forests are under the custody of the district councils, then they had better be empowered with human and financial resources to carry out their jobs purposefully. In fact the huge top-heavy bureaucracy should be shared with the council.
Coming back to the forest department, it is ironic that the principal chief conservator of forests is also a member of the single-window agency that clears all industrial projects in Meghalaya. Sometimes you wonder which side of the fence such people are on.
Are they custodians of forest wealth and the environment or are they part of the government lobby that tries to clear projects pronto without a thought for the impact of such industries on the environment?
For the business lobby, which has parachuted from all over the country to feed on heavy subsidies dished out by the Centre, forests are important only to the extent that they contain strategic minerals.
The greenery and the cycle of life that such natural environments and biodiversity sustains are, for them, disposable nuisance. Recently, an RTI activist group found that the 11 charcoal-based industries located at Byrnihat in Meghalaya have consumed 561,000 tonnes of charcoal up to August 2010 which has resulted in large-scale denudation. To make matters worse, the forest department has even issued a certificate to one company to be a stockists of charcoal. So the forest department seems to be doing something for public consumption while insidiously promoting the destruction of forests.
Now we have come to the issue of climate change – adaptation and mitigation. The forest department is the nodal agency for this grand exercise. Normally it is expected that there be large-scale consultation with the people who bear the direct brunt of climate
change. But we can safely say that this will be another bureaucratic exercise showing a lot happening on paper but nothing will reach the affected farmers and forest-dwellers.
The Centre is already talking of the green mission that would also mean additional funds for addressing climate change. Can we trust our forest department to do the right thing? Very doubtful.
Environmental activists from Meghalaya should invite Jairam Ramesh to see just how much forest land the state has, and who is responsible for this large-scale denudation. Some knuckle-rapping is necessary and here the buck stops with the PCCF.
**The writer is editor, The Shillong Times, and can be contacted at patricia17@rediffmail.com
1 comments:
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