India: Adivasis and forest management

India’s forests, the foundation of the nation’s ecological security, are being lost to a plethora of commercial enterprises at an alarming rate. The latest statistics released by the Forest Survey of India shows that the country has lost over 26,000 sq. km of its dense forests during the period 2001-2003. With over 3000 species of flowering plants and about 200 species of animals of the country having been already categorized as being threatened, this massive loss of forest is surely to have added to the decimation of biodiversity.

This is happening at a time when the whole world, sans USA, is counting down to the year 2010 by when substantial reductions in the loss of global biodiversity should be achieved through the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), to which India is a Party. India’s massive failure in the sustainable management of its forests largely lies in the exclusionary and regimental nature of the forest management regime shaped by the colonial legacy and informed by the casteist worldview that regards with contempt those at the bottom of the social pyramid.

At the root of the deepening forest crisis is the displacement of the Adivasis, the country’s indigenous people, as the traditional caretakers of India’s forests. The Adivasis, the original custodians of our forests, who had defended the forests from the savage assaults by the British colonialists and struggled against a multitude of commercial exploitations in the post colonial political order, have been systematically disenfranchised and alienated from the forest management by the conservation regime, including the wildlife and forest laws. The proposed Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill is, therefore, not only a means to undo the historical injustice done to the Adivasis as the introduction to the draft bill rightly claims, but also provides the much-needed opportunity to win back the world’s largest population of indigenous people as the caretakers of our forests.

It is not surprising that some elements have come out against the proposed law, which in some ways marks a paradigm shift. The doctrine that generates opposition to building partnership with Adivasis in the management of forests holds the autochthons and the rest of the marginalised as the Other and cannot come to terms with even an infinitesimal elevation in the status of the subaltern. Conservation is only an alibi for this doctrine. For, the world has already discarded the exclusionary dogma of conservation that characterized the approach that we had imported from the West.

The CBD, which is legally binding, is based on the triple objectives of conservation, sustainable use and equitable benefit sharing and provides for the participation of the indigenous people in the management of biodiversity. One of the three ongoing working groups established by the Convention process is to address the issues associated with the use and protection of the traditional knowledge of the indigenous people. However, India has made a mockery of the CBD by creating a national law- the Biological Diversity Act- which limits itself to addressing issues related to regulating access to biodiversity, blissfully feigning ignorance of the existence of the indigenous people (in a manner reminiscent of defeating the spirit of the innovative Man and Biosphere Program by simply redesignating some existing protected areas without reforming the management system)

The Agenda 21 adopted by the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in all its four component programs addressing terrestrial living resource management underlines the role of the indigenous people and in addition includes a specific thematic program for strengthening the role of indigenous people in the sustainable management of such resources. Further, the Johannesburg Summit, held ten years after the UNCED, in its Plan of Implementation, calls for enabling the indigenous people to contribute to the implementation of the objectives of CBD and explicitly recognises their role in conserving and using biodiversity in a sustainable way.

It has been the World Parks Congress, its 1962 session in particular, that was largely instrumental in pushing the doctrine of violent and exclusionary form of protected areas in the developing world, modeled along the US’ Yellowstone National Park, in the establishment of which over three hundred native Americans were killed and several thousands displaced. In a turn around, the 2003 edition of the Congress underlined the importance of participatory and collaborative forms of protected area management, and specifically called for the restitution of the traditional lands taken away from the indigenous communities, which is what the draft bill is seeking to achieve. There has been a marked increase in the number of protected areas across the world in recent years exceeding over one hundred thousand sites, covering more than ten per cent of the earth’s terrestrial area. It is pertinent to note that a large number of the recently created protected areas are indeed sustainable resource use reserves.

Addressing the 1972 UN Conference on Human Environment that for the first time put environment on the global political agenda, the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi told the West that poverty was the worst form of pollution- a statement subsequently made famous by our conservation bureaucrats in successive multilateral forums. However, a few months after her return from the Stockholm Conference she was to deepen the poverty and destitution of a huge mass of Indians, ironically in the name of conservation, through the Wildlife Protection Act that challenged the very existence of Adivasis whose life is organically linked to the wildlife, as if the havoc played by the illegitimate Indian Forest Act, 1927 that formalized the colonial appropriation of India’s forests weren’t enough. The tragic disappearance of tiger from Sariska, in spite of having spent Rs ten million (US$ 232,500) per individual tiger within the reserve over the past 25 years, as revealed by the Tiger Task Force, is instructive of the failure of the regimental conservation project.

There is no reason for India to prolong the twin crises of accelerating biodiversity degradation and endangering the Adivasi population even after more than half a century of formal independence. The enactment of the Adivasi forest rights bill should be seen as the first essential step in reforming the country’s forest management regime in order to seek the partnership of the most original conservationists to protect and sustainably use the country’s most critical ecological endowment.

By S Faizi, e-mail: ecology@zajil.net

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Indonesia: A national park, its failure and impact on livelihoods

Local conversations about the classification of the Mount Merapi forest area into a national park often end up questioning why it was established as a park at all.

Mount Merapi forest ecosystem is located at 600 to 2968 meter above sea level, in Yogyakarta Province, Republic of Indonesia. With an area of 8,655 hectares, it is mostly covered by mountain tropical forest which is the source of living of a million people in four districts.

Surface water that comes from Mount Merapi is divided into 3 directions: Progo watershed in the west part, Opak watershed in the middle and Bengawan Solo watershed in the east part. These watersheds have been supplying water for consumption, irrigation, and industry for more than 5 million people of the Jogjakarta and Central Java provinces.

Unsustainable management of Mount Merapi is threatening its very existence. Water privatization by a commercial company is preventing about one thousand farmers from planting their farms; sand mining exploitation reaches 3,5 million cubic meter/year, wellspring sources have been quickly degraded, and flora and fauna is being destroyed.

But the paradigm of the government is still the same: exploitation of resources for cash without any consideration of long term use. Economics is put beyond environment and sustainability.

Many in the area expressed their opposition to the government's plan to classify the area into Mount Merapi National Park (MMNP), when the process began in 2001. Disregarding opposition, the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry issued a decree that officially changed the forest into a protected area on May 4, 2004.

We who oppose the measure denounce that the ministerial decree violates legal principles as well as principles of transparency, democracy and human rights, and is an expression of government's arrogance.

The decree goes against an earlier decree from the same ministry that sets out due process prior to the gazetting of a national park. The decision also contravenes Law No 22/1999 on regional autonomy because it ignores the authority of regional governments and legislative councils in the area.

The concept of national park first emerged in Western countries and was strongly influenced by classical concepts of conservation --a region tightly protected with no one allowed to touch it. It later developed into an eco-fascist conservation model that placed undisturbed "nature" as a top priority even if it meant getting rid of the local inhabitants.

The world's first national park was established in the U.S. in 1872 with the gazetting of the Yellowstone National Park. The park's management did not allow anyone to make use of the natural resources in the park, disregarding the fact that it was the home of indigenous tribes. Conflicts were unavoidable and led to the forced eviction of the indigenous communities from the region.

Unfortunately, many countries, including Indonesia, were inspired by that model. In 1980, the Indonesian government established the first five national parks.

The government applied the concept without considering its suitability to the country's social and economic conditions, apparently preferring to please Western countries rather than its own people. The fact that 42 national parks have been established across the country one after another without comprehensive studies on how the existing parks have been managed, proves so.

The conditions in many of the regions named national parks have worsened since they were gazetted as such. Instead of preserving the area and generating positive spin-offs, the establishment of national parks has often resulted in damage and disadvantage. The Mount Leuser, Mount Halimun, Kutai, Bukit Tiga Puluh, Tanjung Puting, Mount Palung, Ujung Kulon, Lore Lindu, Rawa Aopa, Komodo, Lorentz, and Wasur national parks are examples of how such conservation model leads to social and economic problems, and environmental degradation rather than preservation.

The application of the national park concept in Indonesia is not just at a theoretical level, but also at the policy and management levels. At the policy level, for example, through the National Park Management Body, the government discriminates between the rights of the management body and those of the people, who are considered subordinate to the management body. They have to obey the body without question while it applies fascist regulations that were made for the government's interests. Law No 5/1990 on the conservation of natural resources and ecosystems, which makes no mention of the people's role and rights regarding natural resources, is an example of this arrogance.
The management body organization, too, is not only government-biased but, like other state organizations, suffers from corruption. As the manager of national parks, the management body holds almost complete authority. There is no room for the rights of the surrounding communities. That national park management is often corrupt is shown through its cooperation with business and the military in illegal deforestation --activities that have long been well known. The massive illegal logging that occurs in almost all national parks outside Java, including the Tanjung Puting and Mount Palung national parks, involves the management body management, businesspeople, and military personnel.

This cooperation also leads to the massive theft of biological resources, the eviction of the indigenous inhabitants and the openings of new mining sites inside supposed "national parks".

National parks in Indonesia do not mean conservation; they mean more damage to nature and the impoverishment of local communities.

One should well ask why the government established the Mount Merapi National Park without conducting comprehensive, participative studies prior to it. To my belief, the same problems in other areas will reoccur in Merapi. Why? Because the local community and the Merapi ecosystem are inseparable and interdependent.

For hundreds or maybe even thousands of years, the surrounding communities have been wisely guarding Merapi because it guarantees their livelihoods through its clean water, green trees and because it provides food, shelter and medicines.

Will the establishment of Mount Merapi National Park fix the problems caused by sand quarrying on the slope of Merapi which in turn has caused damage to its forest and dried out its springs? Will the management of the National Park care about the fate of the evicted communities after the arrival of new "investors"? I really don't think so. The National Park system will never be able to answer these problems; it will instead create new ones that will further tarnish this beautiful area.

The problems of Merapi cannot be answered by classifying it as a national park. Only by empowering the local community and integrating the management of the Merapi area to involve all the stakeholders through the principles of cooperation, trust, participation and conservation, will we answer the area's problems.

What this area needs is a people-based conservation model, not a national park concept that has only proved to be a recurrent failure.

We won't let Merapi be another entry into the long list of national park disasters in Indonesia and also in many parts of the world, will we?

By: Mimin Dwi Hartono, Wana Mandhira, Institute for Advocacy and Environment Conservation, e-mail: kaliurang@indo.net.id, wamatour@yahoo.com

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Laos: Aiding or Abetting? Internal Resettlement and International Aid Agencies

A massive restructuring of Lao society is currently taking place. Over the last decade, the Lao government has moved tens of thousands of Indigenous Peoples from their remote upland homes to lowland areas and near roads. While the government's programmes are aimed at "poverty alleviation" and "development", the impacts on the resettled communities' livelihoods, food security and environment have often been devastating.

"Tens of thousands of vulnerable indigenous ethnic minority people have suffered and died due to impacts associated with ill-conceived and poorly implemented internal resettlement initiatives in Laos over the last ten years," write Ian Baird and Bruce Shoemaker in a recent report on resettlement in Laos.

The report, titled "Aiding or Abetting? Internal Resettlement and International Aid Agencies in the Lao PDR", criticises the response of many international aid agencies to the problems caused by resettlement.

Baird and Shoemaker, both of whom have worked in Laos for many years, ask whether some aid agencies are in effect "facilitating violations of the basic rights of impacted communities through their support for internal resettlement".

The problems caused by internal resettlement in Laos have been well documented. In 1997, French anthropologist Yves Goudineau led a research team which documented death rates of up to 30 per cent in upland communities that had been resettled. The report was published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). In 2000, the Asian Development Bank sponsored a Participatory Poverty Assessment led by anthropologist James Chamberlain. This assessment revealed that many villagers believe that their poverty is newly created and due in large part to government programmes involving resettlement. The report states that by reducing swidden cultivation, the Lao government has not decreased poverty, but actually increased it.

Baird and Shoemaker list 18 other studies by NGOs, UN agencies and academics which confirm the impacts on resettled communities in Laos. "To our knowledge," they write, "there is not a single study reporting that resettlement has benefited indigenous ethnic communities in Laos."

Some organisations, including the Swedish Agency for International Development Cooperation, Concern Worldwide and the Canada Fund, are actively resisting further resettlement in Laos, for example by working in villages in remote upland areas, demonstrating that there are alternatives to resettlement.

Others, however, are actively promoting resettlement. Finn Reske-Nielsen, the UNDP Resident Representative in Laos, appears oblivious to the evidence in reports published by his own organisation of the impacts on resettled communities. He argues that "Voluntary relocation makes good sense in a sparsely populated country like Laos, where it is difficult to bring educational, health and other essential services to the people."

Baird and Shoemaker point out that there is nothing inevitable about resettlement in Laos: "It is being forced upon communities through a combination of specific political, social and environmental policies and actions." Some aid agencies, such as the ADB, require resettlement to achieve their long-term objectives. "Regional integration, promotion of industrial forestry and cash cropping, industrialization, and the opening of markets require the type of demographic changes in rural Laos that internal resettlement is helping bring about," write Baird and Shoemaker.

In 2004, Sandro Cerrato, the European Union's chief of mission in Vientiane, produced a concept paper which called for a new dialogue between large aid agencies and the Lao government on resettlement. Cerrado suggests that aid agencies should support resettlement so that it is done better.

Baird and Shoemaker point out that some organisations have criticized Cerrato's concept paper as being based on a series of false assumptions. Cerrato assumes that resettlement will relieve poverty. In fact, resettlement has "contributed to long-term poverty, as well as environmental degradation in the uplands and the lowlands, cultural alienation, and increasing social conflicts," write Baird and Shoemaker.

Cerrato assumes that aid agencies can differentiate between voluntary and involuntary resettlement. But in the Lao context it's difficult to tell the difference, argue Baird and Shoemaker: "almost all of what is classified as voluntary resettlement in Laos is, in reality, not villager-initiated."

Cerrato assumes that resettlement is inevitable and that aid agencies are powerless to promote alternatives. He assumes that more money and better implementation would somehow improve resettlement, even though there is no evidence to support this. He ignores the fact that upland communities have the right to decide their own future and assumes that they are not capable of doing so.

International aid agencies operate in Laos with very little accountability. They face no scrutiny from the state-controlled media. International aid agencies rarely have to justify their policies or actions to local communities or institutions. They do not need to worry about local monitoring or "watchdog" groups, or the possibilities of legal action when their actions end up harming local communities.

Although Cerrato seems to ignore the extensive research on the impacts of resettlement in Laos, it is unacceptable for the EU to argue that it is unaware of the potential consequences of supporting further resettlement in Laos. Baird and Shoemaker point out that it is still unclear how the EU initiative will develop. But if it goes ahead as currently structured, the EU could be seen as actively complicit in the violation of the human rights of upland ethnic communities in Laos.

"Aiding or Abetting? Internal Resettlement and International Aid Agencies in the Lao PDR", by Ian Baird and Bruce Shoemaker is published by Probe International and is available here:
http://www.probeinternational.org/pi/documents/mekong/AidingOrAbetting.pdf.

By Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de

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Thailand: “Community forest bill” poses relocation threat for rural communities in conservation forest areas

In an ironic twist, Thailand’s Community Forest Bill intended as a formal framework to define rights of communities to co-manage forest areas now threatens to resettle rural communities especially ethnic peoples living in the uplands and conservation forest areas.

On 15 September 2005, a joint House-Senate committee scrutinising the draft law ruled that community forests be prohibited in “prime forest areas”. The panel voted in favour of a proposal by the Natural Resources and Environment Minister Yongyuth Tiyapairat to set up “special forest zones” where human activities, including establishment of community forests, are prohibited.

The panel’s ruling means all human settlements in these forest zones must be relocated once the bill becomes law. According to Yongyuth, a special forest zone is an area with a slope of more than 30 degrees, with high levels of biological diversity, and located in upland areas.

There are about 2.8 million hectares of such forest areas nationwide, mostly located in conservation forests that include national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, classified watersheds and no-hunting zones. No clear figures exist but it is estimated that one million families throughout the country including ethnic communities live and farm in these areas.

More than ten years of drafting and negotiations between government officials, local community groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) led to the draft community forest bill which would be Thailand's first legislation recognising the legal status of communities living in and around Thailand's National Forest Reserves to use, manage and protect their forests in co-operation with the Royal Forestry Department (RFD).

The forest bill is also one of the first pieces of legislation to use a Constitutional mechanism that allows local people to propose legislation with the support of 50,000 signatures – local people from all over Thailand gathered 52,698 signatures and presented the community forest bill to Parliament in early 2000.

The Lower House of Parliament passed the bill. But subsequently, the Upper House (Senate) blocked the bill and proposed amendments that forced the draft into review by a joint panel comprising members of both the Upper and Lower Houses of Parliament.

Permsak Makarabhirom, forestry academic in Kasetsart University and a member of another drafting committee that scrutinised the bill said that the joint panel’s proposal for “special forest zone” subverts the original intent of the bill by excluding communities living in protected forest areas and violates the rights of forest-dependent communities.

“It contradicts the spirit of Thailand’s Constitution such as Article 46 that supports local rights to management of natural resources,” he said.

More than 8,000 "community forests" all over Thailand are being used, protected and managed by local communities, some over several generations. The draft bill was intended to legalise these community forest areas and provide official recognition for local people’s forest conservation efforts.

However, the RFD and some nature conservation groups have consistently opposed the draft bill’s proposal to establish community forests inside protected forest areas. In its rush to convert reserve forest to protected area status, the RFD demarcated many areas occupied and used by local people as national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. This resulted in a situation where most protected areas in Thailand are surrounded or partially occupied by an alienated local population who feel that their legitimate property rights have been appropriated.

The RFD prefers resettlement of village people living in forests or imposes severe restrictions on their use of forests. The RFD approach, however, has so far failed both to prevent the continuing deforestation of Thailand’s remaining forests from widespread illegal logging involving powerful business interests and to support the livelihoods of rural communities.

Moreover, previous state attempts at forcible resettlement of communities living in forest areas have mostly increased impoverishment of local communities, worsened rural conflicts and caused further loss of forest areas as displaced people clear forests elsewhere.

Farming along with a mix of other activities including seasonal job-seeking in urban areas provides livelihoods for many village communities. And the potential income generation in community forests is also now widely accepted particularly for economically-poorer families with limited incomes due to moderate land holdings, lack of education or old age that can get access to non-timber forest products.

Decho Chaiyapap, coordinator of the Chiang Mai-based Community Forests of North Thailand, a coalition of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and farmers in northern Thailand, said villagers disagreed with the panel’s resolution since it restricts them both from accessing forests and practicing agriculture in these areas. “It is not clear how the “special forest zone” would be specifically defined or by whom. So we cannot say for certain how many families would be affected,” he said.

Questions also remain whether the joint panel had the legal mandate to amend the provisions of a bill that had already been approved in the Lower House of Parliament. Civil society groups have petitioned Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a letter stating that: “The joint panel’s amendments violate the draft community forest bill passed in Parliament that allows for community forest to be established in protected forest areas.” The letter also stated that the panel’s proposal for special forest zones is a violation of the draft bill’s intention to “support local management of forest areas both inside and outside the conservation forests since forest management solely by the state has not only proved ineffective but also worsened forest destruction in Thailand.”

By Noel Rajesh, Chiang Mai University, Unit for Social and Environmental Research (USER), e-mail: rajesh@sea-user.org