India

Forests? Or Plantations?

Large-scale planting of eucalyptus and acacia trees under a World Bank-aided project in India not only squeezed the rich underground water table in the districts of Bengaluru Rural, Kolar and Chikkaballapur, but also affected annual rainfall in the region. Assessing research papers and observations by forest officials, agriculture and geology researchers belonging to various organisations, an expert committee headed by the Minister for Forests, Ecology and Environment learned that the tree plantations were responsible for the recent parched condition of these districts.

Forest rights movements in India need support to prevent the commercial takeover of forests from the forest communities for monoculture tree plantations. Please find below a petition. Urgent signatures of both organisations and individuals would be very welcome. Deadline for endorsing the letter is Friday 14! Send your endorsement to the following email: sanghamitradubeyikk(at)gmail.com

The Odisha government gave more than 800 hectares of land to the South Korean steel giant POSCO for building a power plant, jeopardizing around 4000 families. The project has since the very beginning faced firm resistance from local communities as well as serious question marks from human rights and environmental groups on its social and environmental impacts. After POSCO pulled out of the project earlier this year, Odisha’s Industry Minister announced that the land would be transferred to the Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO), a state agency.

Across the world, indigenous peoples face arrests, harassment, torture and death in the name of nature conservation. The Kaziranga National Park in India is but one infamous example of this inhumane tendency. Fifty people have been extrajudicially executed by park guards at the infamous “shoot-to-kill” national park in the last three years. Tribal people face being shot, beaten, tortured and killed at the hands of heavily armed park officials. Last year guards shot a 7 year-old boy who is now maimed for life.

  The region typically known as “India’s North East” or also referred to as just “North East” is linked tenuously with mainland India by a roughly 20 kilometer-wide land bridge, and surrounded by Nepal, Bhutan, China, Myanmar and Bangladesh. There are over 200 indigenous and tribal communities living in this region, most of whom share similarities in culture, food, clothing, economy and polity, and evolved diverse laws and institutions specific to each tribe.

WRM together with the All India Forum of Forest Movements, and the Campaign for Survival and Dignity are mobilizing against the CAF Act (also known as the CAMPA Bill). This new Bill was recently approved by the Indian parliament. We apprehend it will result in gross violations of forest dwelling communities’ rights and in a massive expansion of industrial tree plantations.

The Indian Parliament approved this July a passage from the Compensatory Afforestation Fund, better known as CAMPA Bill, which seeks to hand over large funds for promoting enormous “afforestation” plans; that is, monoculture tree plantations.

Despite India’s National Green Tribunal statement on early April affirming that POSCO’s Environmental Clearance is valid only up to 19th July 2017, the case has not been closed and it will have another hearing on early May of this year. Meanwhile, the state police have turned the area in to a repressive colony.