The Hindu Business Line : Development and nature's revenge

If we had been sensitive, the tsunami could not have laid low a lakh and more lives eking out a living on the coastlines of Indonesia, South India and Sri Lanka.

ON Sunday my friend Kishor Rithe requested me to drop in on P.M. Lad, who was in Mumbai en route to Amravati. One met Lad at V.T. Station and had a 30-minute chat with him before he took the Vidarbha Express at 7.40 p.m.

He talked of a recent visit to the North in search of the Himalayan Griffon vulture. A bullock had broken its back and had collapsed on a village road and Lad was sure it would attract the Griffon vulture for him to take a good photograph. For two days he roamed the area but could not sight the vulture; on the third day he was surprised at the bullock holding on to life. A village woman had been offering food and drink to the animal lying on its side over three days.

"I felt bad. Here was a sensitive woman trying to ease the agony of an animal while I was hovering around for a good shot of a vulture," he told me and added, "There are many inside and outside the government trying to do their bit to protect forests and animals. But I wonder how many are sensitive to nature."

And Parashuram Mahadeorao Lad, nearing 70, should know as he has managed the wildlife and forests of Madhya Pradesh for long. If we had been sensitive like the village woman, the tsunami could not have laid low a lakh and more lives eking out a living on the coastlines of Indonesia, South India and Sri Lanka.

Debi Goenka of the Bombay Environmental Action Group, in an e-mail, informs that a few months ago a secretary to the Government of India had asked him: "What is the scientific basis for 500 metres?" The Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF) is trying to redraft the Coastal Regulation Zone notification, which disallows any construction up to 500 metres from the seacoast. The tsunami should get the government to raise the limit to 1,000 metres to protect sandbars, mangroves, coral and all the rest, which cushion the sea's wrath.

At a workshop held in Chennai on June 18 and 19, 2004, most state governments felt the CRZ rules were scuppering economic development. The MoEF has set up a committee to examine and review the CRZ notification.

The Maharashtra government, prompted by builders, is keen to scrap the CRZ rules and allow hotels, malls and other cement structures on the coastline to turn Mumbai into Shanghai. As of date, in Navi Mumbai housing societies are violating CRZ rules, mangroves being done away with; it's the same in Andheri, Borivili and Sewri from where a 22-km road bridge to Navi Mumbai is to be built, doing away with mangroves and flamingos.

The Gulf of Kutch is turning vulnerable while the forest cover in Orissa and its coastline are being carved up by steel and bauxite ventures. There is a proposal to set up an atomic power project in Sunderbans abutting one of the greatest mangrove stretches and any protest by environmentalists is termed anti-national. In tandem, a business group is thinking of putting up an eco-tourist facility in that area.

The Vajpayee Government was particularly uncaring with the Bombay Natural History Society being denied a seat on the National Board for Wildlife.

Dr Manmohan Singh's Government has not yet reversed the decision. Any plea by naturalists to preserve green patches is being dubbed anti-development. Mostly these projects will impact the lives of tribals and could turn them into day-labourers living in shanties.

Wild life acts provide for re-settlement of tribals but that rarely occurs in a decent manner. Akin to the craze for flyovers in cities is the rather wild idea of inter-linking rivers by dams. Rivers will dry out when forests go and dams will stand as billboards for cement companies. It suits governments and contractors as there is public money to have in the deals. Sadly, an uncaring mind-fix informs development policies across nations: in Brazil (the Amazon region) and in China (The Three Gorges dam).

The Chinese novelist Gao Xingjian in the novel Soul Mountain writes: "Look at the Min River you came along on your way in here, the forests on both sides have been stripped bare. The Min River has turned into a black muddy river but the Yangtze is much worse yet they are going to block off the river and construct a dam in the Three Gorges! Of course, it's romantic to indulge in wild fantasy but the place lies on a geological fault and has many documented records of landslides throughout its history. Needless to say, blocking off the river and putting up a dam will destroy the entire ecology of the Yangtze River basin but if it leads to earthquakes the population of hundreds of millions living in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze will become fish and turtles! Of course no one will listen to an old man like me, but when people assault nature like this, nature inevitably takes revenge!"

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Development and nature's revenge

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