The Hindu Business Line : Missing the woods...

Healthy forests spell a healthy planet. This is what we have realised a little too late. Over the last five years, the world suffered a net loss of 37 billion hectares of forest, as per statistics compiled by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation. The yearly loss may have come down to 7.3 million hectares from the 8.9 million hectares recorded in the 1990s, yet gross deforestation has not declined since 2000.

At a time when climate change and global warming has stirred up awareness on the need for forest conservation, Philip Gain’s Stolen Forests aims to educate us about how an unholy nexus between administrators, international funding agencies and vested interests can wipe out forests and livelihoods while drastically reducing groundwater levels in the name of development.

The book is a poignant narrative of the tragedy that befell Bangladesh’s forests. Yet, it has lessons for all in the developing world, and especially South Asia, to learn from.

Conceived out of first-hand experience gained through years of field study by Bangladeshi journalist-turned-conservationist Philip Gain, Stolen Forests tells the story of how Bangladesh’s forest cover reduced from a total of 18 per cent at the turn of the century to its present six per cent.

He finds the official statistics questionable too, since the six per cent in government records includes the monoculture plantations of teak, acacia and eucalyptus, which, in Gain’s opinion, can never be classified as “forests.”

“A true forest takes hundreds of years to grow. Hundreds of species of plants, animals, birds and insects find their habitat in its environment. In a true forest, different species of plants grow in different layers. The forest-dwelling communities, their culture, way of life, tradition, knowledge and technology are also part of forests…”

Social forestry is touted by authorities as the panacea for the ills plaguing rural and economically backward people and as the ideal device to generate income. Probing deep into the concept, though, Gain finds that instead of forest dwellers, influential individuals make money by setting up banana, pineapple or papaya plantations under social forestry programmes.

Forests (in Bangladesh) are classified into reserved forests, protected forests, and unclassified State forests. But once a forest is classified as reserved, it becomes out of bounds for the indigenous forest-dwelling communities who depend on them for their livelihood.

Forest without trees

Deltaic Bangladesh, which came into being in 1971, after having been a part of undivided India and erstwhile Pakistan, boasted a significant forest cover in Modhupur, Rangamati, Tangail, Sylhet, the north-east Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), and its Sundarbans. Today, the sal forests of Modhupur have all disappeared and very few forest patches remain elsewhere. The CHT forests have been largely replaced by teak, rubber and other plantations. The only true forests that remain are in the Sundarbans, where again, prawn and shrimp farms are playing havoc with the ecology. The once reserved and protected Chokoria Sundarbans in south-east Bangladesh is today a forest without trees.

The book also demolishes many myths about development and questions the condemnation of the slash and burn of ‘jum’ cultivation of tribal people. Citing studies done by Latin American scientists, Gain points out that cultivating the land after burning off dry vegetation, and then leaving it fallow to let the forest grow back, can regenerate the phosphorus that is generally lacking in such soils. The shortening of the fallow period is something that the indigenous people should not be blamed for. It is the policy of settling Bengalis in forest lands, and the reserving of jum lands, homesteads and the like by district commissioners at the cost of tribal livelihoods that are the culprit.

Vested interest

As per the law, degraded forests were to be replaced with planted forests. But vested interests have ensured otherwise. The moneyed have been parcelled portions of true forest. As a result, miles of sal forests have been cleared off to make way for eucalyptus, acacia, banana, pineapple and papaya plantations. The monoculture of these plantations, whether in the CHT, or Modhupur or the north-eastern regions of Bangladesh, has ensured that there is no undergrowth characteristic of any typical forest. The lack of wild berries, tubers, fruit and medicinal herbs has resulted in a loss of livelihood and food for forest dwellers.

Disappearance of medicinal herbs has resulted in the vanishing of traditional knowledge and folk medicine that indigenous people rely on. The vanishing floral biodiversity has caused the disappearance of wild animals like monkeys, langur, deer, birds as also tigers that prey on these animals. Even when degraded or partly degraded forests are to be rejuvenated, fast growing eucalyptus and other exotic commercial species are opted for. Sal or bamboo are never thought of.

Irreparable damage

These practices irreparably damage the soil. When planted and natural mangroves were pulled down to make way for commercial prawn and shrimp cultivation under World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) projects, the acid sulfate content of the soil increased. The brackish water of the prawn farms has resulted in a rise in salinity and started breeding deadly viruses to the detriment of the health of the people in the Sundarbans.

The chemical fertilisers and pesticides that are sprayed in the banana, papaya and pineapple plantations have driven off birds and other species to the detriment of the soil. Huge hydroelectric projects and paper mills have also done their own bit in swallowing wide swathes of forest, while marginalising and depriving the forest-dwelling indigenous people.

Gain has exposed the irony in the Bangladeshi government itself breaking its meticulously formulated policy to protect its forest patches. The doubly-protected Lawachhara National Park in north-east Bangladesh, one of the last remaining habitats of the endangered Hoolock Gibbon and a shelter for very many colourful birds, is already under threat following the laying of a gas pipeline in 2005 by multi-national oil giant Unocal under a contract with Petrobangla. The pipeline was laid in violation of the Bangladesh Wildlife Preservation Order of 1973, and Environment Conservation Act, 1995. Citing the fires that devastated the Magurchhara and Tengratila forests and wrecked forest-dwelling communities’ homes therein, Gain wonders aloud on the logic involved.

Well researched

Of particular significance is the research Gain has put in to expose the manner in which industries are set up or forests reserved in scant regard of the rights of forest dwelling indigenous tribes like the Khyangs, Khasis, Garos and Mandis whose homesteads, jum lands and commons are regularly encroached upon by the authorities.

The Bangladeshi government has just awoken to the wrongs committed so far, and recently set up two organisations with American assistance to stem the damage done. Arannyak Foundation was set up in 1994 with initial US support, while Nishorgo was set up in 2003 with financial aid from ADB and USAID.

Arannyak is intended to extend grants for supporting initiatives to protect native forests, while Nishorgo is a project owned by the Bangladeshi government and being implemented by the Washington-based International Resource Group (IRG) with three Bangladeshi non-governmental organisations to protect forests with the help of native communities.

Although both the organisations have made some headway to protect the remaining forests, the author expresses scepticism as regards them achieving their stated goals owing to the contradiction of US support to these groups.

The conflict of interest involved here — with the US having been a major funding nation to the ADB which has been the major culprit in the depletion of Bangladeshi forests, is not lost on the author.

The book is lucidly written, and never verbose. Gain’s regard for the uniqueness of tribal culture and knowledge, and his admiration for the indigenous forest-dwellers is clearly evident in his writing There is also a lot of detail on indigenous communities, and the way their human rights have been trampled upon, which deflects from the principal focus on environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity.

Terminologies are well defined in a glossary, and every colour plate explained. The breathtaking photographs of flora, fauna and the indigenous people whom Gain considers so much a part of the forests succinctly sum up the book’s appeal.

One only wishes that Gain had devoted more space to what is being done now to repair the damage done, and a little less space to the dirty devices used in the past to rob his country of its green cover. But then, again, exposing dirty games must have been irresistible for a trained investigative journalist like Gain.

All in all, Gain’s work is a layman’s labour of love to conserve nature’s bounty and save a world that shall soon be lost to industrialisation and development.

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