India

The World Bank is apparently willing to play a major role in the promotion of tree plantations. This can mean good or bad news, depending on the type of plantations it is willing to promote. The country studies provide useful -though incomplete- information on the issue, which we believe the Bank should use as a starting point for its own research on the positive and negative impacts of different types of plantations. It appears clearly that large-scale monoculture tree plantations should not be promoted, given their negative environmental impacts and their few positive social effects.

The preservationist approach to forest protection, which considers people as a threat to nature, ignores the human and territorial rights of rural communities and indigenous peoples living in the forests, who in fact usually contribute to their conservation. The view of nature as a void space, at the same time beautiful landscape and store of biodiversity for humanity, is not only unrealistic -since practically all the Earth is nowadays a geographic space modified by human intervention- but also leads to social and environmental conflicts.

According to the official viewpoint, India holds favourable climatic and social conditions for the set up of tree plantations. Forestry officials state that more than 60 million hectares of "non-forest wastelands and open scrub forest lands" can be considered available for undertaking tree plantation activities. The Ministry of Environment and Forests is promoting the use of clonal disease-resistant plants of fast-growing eucalyptus. Clones of acacia, poplars, gmelina and teak are also being included in the menu.

A conflict has arisen regarding 400,000 hectares of forest land in the Indian state of Orissa. Actors are the villagers who have recreated the forest from barren lands and government officials, who believe the area belongs to the state. Out of the total protected area, 60% are reserve forests and the rest are either protected or village forests. Sustainable forests management by local communities in the area started in the decade of 1960.

Chilika Lake is one of the largest inland brackish water bodies in Asia, of immense ecological importance for its unique and varied biodiversity. Though Chilika was declared by the Ramsar Convention to be a wetland of international importance, the shrimp aquaculture industry at that time threatened to establish itself there via the mafia-like activities of the powerful industrial group Tata House which planned several industrial shrimp farms on the shores of Lake Chilika.

In different countries of the world conflicts have arisen between the protection of national parks and the conservation of wildlife on the one hand, and the defense of the rights of people that live in those areas on the other. The hegemonic official model of conservation has a vision of nature as composed by beautiful –but empty- spaces, ignoring that the sustainable use that most local communities practice in these areas is the best guarantee for conservation. The problem is especially important in countries with a high density of rural population.

Extensive mangrove areas at Pazhayangadi, Kannur District in Kerala, are under threat of logging. Local groups and activists have been taking legal steps like getting a stay order from the court and writing to various Government bodies on such destructive practises.

A group of about 20 social activists, wildlife conservationists, researchers, lawyers, and mediapersons met from 10 to 12 April, 1997, at Bhikampura- Kishori in Alwar District, adjacent to the Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan (western India). The meeting, called by the Indian Institute of Public Administration and Kalpavriksh, and hosted by Tarun Bharat Sangh, was an attempt to initiate a dialogue between those advocating the cause of wildlife protection and those struggling to uphold the human rights of rural communities living in and around wildlife habitats.