ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Tribals Distressed by Ban on Forest Gathering
By Keya Acharya

Soliga tribals contemplate their bleak future in the BRT Hills, Karnataka state. Credit:Keya Acharya/IPS

KANNERI, BRT Hills Sanctuary, Karnataka, Nov 20 (IPS) - The magical trill of the Nilgiri Whistling Thrush deep in the jungles of this remote southern Indian wildlife sanctuary is no comfort to its nearly 2,000 Soliga aboriginal tribal families.

The implementation in 2006 of the Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Act 2002 now bans adviasis (aboriginal tribes) from gathering non-timber forest produce (NTFP) such as honey, wild herbs, mosses, lichen and fruits for commercial purposes from parks and sanctuaries.

Till the ban, Soligas had usufruct rights to collect NTFP and sell them to their own cooperative LAMPs (Large-scale Adivasi Multipurpose Society) which in turn would auction them to the highest bidder, generally traders who in turn sell the produce to various industries.

Being a cooperative, LAMPS functioned on a non-profit basis.

Approximately 12,500 (of a total population of 30,000) Soliga had subsisted inside BRT (short for Biligiri Rangana Betta), growing a little food and relying heavily on NTFP sales for daily sustenance.

Their close link with the forests has given them a deep knowledge of the ecology and of the forests of BRT. There have been no instances reported of poaching or harming wildlife by Soliga inside the sanctuary.

But without the small income from selling to LAMPS, Soliga families are now facing starvation and distress.

Active contributors to LAMPS, like Chikkananjegowda of the Kanneri advasi settlement inside the sanctuary, are now unemployed.

Chikkananjegowda’s wife, 40-year-old Veeramma found work as a daily-wage labourer in a coffee estate nearby, but that too, dried up.

''Family members are now commuting long distances daily in search of seasonal and menial jobs," say a group of ten elders from the Soliga community to members of the Pune-based non-government organisation (NGO) ‘Kalpavriksh’, visiting BRT to study the situation.

‘ We have to spend half of the daily wage of Indian Rupees 60 ( 1.5 US dollar) to travel by bus to find work, and we have no food to carry or eat.‘

In another hut alongside Veeramma’s, 42-year-old Gowramma says her family manages one meal a day by traveling 25 km daily to cut cane.

"The DFO (divisional forest officer), threatens us if we walk through the forests, so we have to spend money taking a bus."

Earlier she and her husband earned Rs. 5,000-6000 ( approximately 125 dollars) per year from NTFP sales to LAMPS, but now the four self-help groups serving LAMPS in the area have no work.

The problem has now soured relations between Soliga and the forest staff from one of goodwill into one of mutual distrust.

In March 2007, the forest department arrested several Soliga for alleged arson. The Soligas, in turn, say a few misguided youth may have been responsible, but are upset at the DFO’s treatment of the issue.

Magarikhete Gowda, 60, has now filed a police report for physical abuse against the DFO. R. Raju. " Up until now we had no problem with the forest department," says Veeramma, " but this year has been different."

Raju denies using excessive force against the tribals, saying "95 percent of them are innocent, but frustrated at the ban of collection of NTFP’’.

Letters to the government, begun in 2004 and continuing today, argue whether LAMPS, from which the Soliga depend on their daily living, can be defined as ‘commercial extraction’, which is now banned under the Wildlife Act.

The State Wildlife Board, which heard the forest department’s request in August 2007 to allow some extraction of NTFP for Soliga since it was a livelihood sytem and not a commercial process, has passed the matter on to the central government in New Delhi for a decision.

The Indian government’s ban, done in a bid to protect the country’s fast-depleting wildlife, has also affected tribals inside protected areas in other regions such as adjacent Kerala state.

But the plight of this primitive tribe, deeply connected to the forests, is the most dire reported so far.

Meanwhile, the Soliga Association has been pleading with the State’s forest secretary, Governor and other authorities. In desperation, the organisation has organised a ‘sit-in’ protest on Nov. 26 outside the office of the divisional commissioner, the highest ranking official in the district.

"'I think we need jobs", says C. Madegowda, the first Soliga postgraduate from a school set up 25 years ago by a medical doctor, H. Sudarshan, now internationally acclaimed for his work amongst the tribals.

Madegowda says the majority drop out after school because of lack of finances to study further and the forest department does not have a system of recruiting trained and educated local youth. " Some youth have recently been given some ‘weeding’ work", comments Madegowda.

Dr. Sudarshan says India’s rural welfare measure, the National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) scheme, wherein one member of each rural family is guaranteed at least 100 days of paid labour, has not been considered for BRT and the tribals.

" This scheme is absolutely necessary to the tribals, more so because NTFP collection has been banned," feels Sudarshan. "The administration could easily work out 100 days of employment through desilting tanks (reservoirs), rainwater harvesting and watershed construction," he says.

Meanwhile, Kalpavriksh and a Bangalore-based scientific organisation called the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) are working with Sudharshan’s organisation to help the Soliga.

Kalpavriksh is campaigning with central and State authorities to bring attention to the Soliga’s distress.

Sudarshan is offering resources including trained youth to the forest department for forest conservation, in a bid to undertake collaborative and participatory management of BRT.

" I am fully convinced that conservation and livelihood can go together. Give me the chance to show it, " to doctor said.

Conservationists vs. conservation

A more balanced approach to conservation and livelihoods is urgently required since the current one is alienating local people. ASHISH KOTHARI

Photo: Ashish Kothari

Dignified but dispossessed: The Soliga adivasis of Biligiri Sanctuary.

Even as the tiger crisis makes the headlines, conservationists should be doing all they can to garner greater public support for wildlife conservation. Instead, we are making many more enemies.

Across the country in dozens of sites, the fragile livelihoods that communities living within forests have carved out for themselves are being snatched away by insensitive conservation laws and programmes. The people, who have for centuries considered forests their mother, are being alienated from them.

Forest fires

In March this year, there were reports of widespread forest fires in the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary (BRT WLS), in Karnataka. Once famous as the hideout of Veerappan, BRT WLS is a stronghold of the elephant and other wildlife, as also home to a few thousand Soliga adivasis. Newspaper reports cited forest officials blaming these adivasis for the fires, suggesting that they were probably taking out their anger on the government for having banned collection of non-timber forest produce (NTFP).

An investigation by Kalpavriksh revealed that indeed the Soliga adivasis were angry and upset. The ban on collection of produce like amla (gooseberry), medicinal plants, honey, and lichen, had hit them badly. In some cases such prod uce comprised over 60 per cent of their income, apart from their own use for food, health, housing, and other requirements.

Gauramma, an elder of Kaneri Colony, a Soliga settlement, had this to say: “Ever since we have been stopped from collecting forest produce, we are in a desperate situation. We used to have two full meals a day, now even one is difficult to get.” She and her husband now migrate out of the sanctuary to work, earning a meagre amount as labour in the fields of non-adivasis.

Our investigation found that the Soligas could not be blamed for most of the forest fires. However, the alienation caused by the NTFP ban led to a lack of interest in reporting fires or helping the Forest Department to douse them, as was the case earlier.

Additionally, local researchers reported that outsiders had chopped down several dozen amla (gooseberry) trees in the WLS.

In previous years, they would have been stopped by the Soligas who had a stake in protecting the trees. Clearly, the NTFP ban is not only causing widespread impoverishment and misery, but also backfiring on conservation itself. This will intensify if the anger among the Soligas grows, and if, as some local social workers fear, “Naxalite” groups active in nearby areas gain a foothold among the disgruntled adivasis.

BRT WLS is not an isolated example. A recent study revealed that thousands of families in various protected areas of Orissa have suffered a similar fate. In Baisipalli and Satkosia Sanctuaries, the ban on NTFP collection has reduced already thin earnings, by 50 to 90 per cent. Many families are migrating to find work, with serious impact on social life and greater chances of exploitation. The government has provided no alternatives.

This is an issue of grave constitutional and human rights violation, as the right to life can only be sustained if access to basic livelihood resources is ensured.

At the heart of the issue is Section 29 of the Wild Life (Protection) Act 2003, which permits the extraction of forest produce only as a means of wildlife management. Such produce is to go to local people, but only if the extraction is for “personal bona fide” and not for “commercial” purposes.

When conservationists in New Delhi formulated this provision, they undoubtedly had in mind large-scale industrial extraction of bamboo, timber, and NTFP, which are serious threats to wildlife. But, by providing no definitions to the term “commercial”, they also dealt a blow to small-scale community-based traditional collection of forest produce.

Interpretations

Adding to the crisis is a Supreme Court order. In February 2000, the Court directed that all states were required to refrain from ordering any removal of “dead, diseased, dying or wind fallen trees, drift wood and grasses, etc from any National Park or Game Sanctuary…”

Subsequent to this, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) in 2003 and the Centrally Empowered Committee of the Supreme Court in 2004 greatly expanded the interpretation of this order by asking all State Governments to cease any further enjoyment of rights within protected areas, without central permission.

This over-zealous interpretation, coupled with the language of Section 29 of the WLPA, has prompted many State Governments into the kind of action mentioned above, mostly in the last year or two.

In the case of BRT WLS, the Deputy Conservator of Forests (DCF) in charge of the Sanctuary, Dixit Kumar, argued in 2004 that stopping NTFP collection would create suffering and backfire on conservation. He said that basic livelihood activities should be considered “bona fide” and not “commercial”.

This is an argument that State Governments could have used to continue NTFP collection. Of course there are many areas where even local forest use may be ecologically damaging but, in hundreds of initiatives across India, communities have shown that they can adopt restrictions and regulations to make it sustainable, especially with government or NGO help. Ironically, in BRT WLS, scientists have shown that the NTFP extraction is already within sustainable limits… the last place a ban was justified.

Integrate livelihood

There is a crying need for a more balanced approach to conservation and livelihoods. The Wild Life Act is a valuable law, one of the few standing in the way of wholesale destruction of our natural ecosystems. But its proponents must accept that some of its provisions, and interpretations of these by the courts, are archaic and against the interests of conservation itself. Refusal to accept this has meant that human rights activists have become increasingly strident in their demands. Indeed, if conservationists had integrated livelihood concerns as part of conservation policy over the last few decades, adivasi activists may never have had to push for separate forest rights legislation.

As it now stands, the enactment of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest-Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 is likely to have very mixed results, with some substantial gains by adivasis and forests, and some disastrous losses.

Why many conservationists are blind to this reality is baffling. Why can’t we see the widespread hostility generated, creating situations where it is much harder to protect critical tiger populations?

Why would forest-dwelling communities report poachers and fires to forest officials when all they have received is suffering? Conversely, can’t we see that most communities would not support poaching if their basic needs are being ensured by conservation programmes, if we help strengthen their long-term stake in protecting ecosystems and wildlife?

One needs only to look at what has happened in a handful of sites where officials have taken such an approach. At Periyar Tiger Reserve, communities (including hardcore poachers) have been aided with better marketing facilities for their agricultural produce, and alternative livelihoods such as ecotourism. In turn they actively patrol the forests and report untoward incidents. Both livelihoods and conservation are strengthened.

In BRT WLS itself, the availability of participatory monitoring, intense scientific research, Soliga traditions of conservation, and active NGOs provide an ideal situation for collaborative protected area management. Such initiatives are happening across the world but here, in India, we remain blinkered by outdated western conservation visions, which the West itself is discarding.

The writer is a member of Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group.