Pressure mounting on Ramesh to withdraw controversial wildlife rules

After the Sonia Gandhi headed National Advisory Council (NAC) said that rights of forest dwellers should not be diluted in any way, pressure is mounting on the environment ministry to withdraw its controversial guidelines for declaring Critical Wildlife Habitats (CWH). Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 1, 2011, 20:38:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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After the Sonia Gandhi headed National Advisory Council (NAC) said that rights of forest dwellers should not be diluted in any way, pressure is mounting on the environment ministry to withdraw its controversial guidelines for declaring Critical Wildlife Habitats (CWH).

A grouping of environmental organisations, including forest right activists and some wildlife groups, have sought withdrawal of the guidelines even as environment minister Jairam Ramesh has called a meeting this week to explain the ministry’s position on the new guidelines.

Apart from environment groups, officials from the ministry of Tribal Affairs, who are not happy with the guidelines and forest department officials have also been called for the meeting.

“The guidelines are in total violation of the Forest Rights Act,” said Ashish Kothari of NGO Kalpavriksh, after Ramesh issued a clarification on the purpose of the guidelines. The ministry had issued the guidelines in February this year, after which Ramesh issued a clarificatory note, but it has failed to pacify the agitating environmental activists.

“The guidelines should be withdrawn. There is a need for a wider discussion on CWH process and approach,” Kothari, said in a representation submitted on behalf of environmental groups to Ramesh.

Environmental groups also claimed that the new guidelines contradict the recommendations of a joint committee of environment and tribal affairs ministries on the Forest Rights Act, on critical tiger and wildlife habitats.

The biggest concern against the guidelines is the lack of a democratic process to determine the habitats, which once identified, will give powers to the government to relocate people. The groups have also alleged that the guidelines do not require a proper scientific and knowledge based approach in determining the habitats.

Highlighting several loopholes, the groups have said the guidelines aim at doing away with the consultation process before declaring a critical wildlife habitat and there is no clarity on the process for identification of wildlife areas for declaring them as CWH under the guidelines.

As against the claims of the government, not much headway has been made in the implementation of the Forest Rights Act in over 600 protected areas, which could be declared as wildlife habitats under the new guidelines.

“Inevitably, in most of the protected areas, declaring CWHs will lead to the FRA process being undermined or short-circuited, as the state government will scramble to try to finish the FRA process,” the letter read.

They also claimed that the clarification issued by the minister in February has created more confusion, as the guidelines fail to mention that the CWHs will be identified only after the rights of tribals are settled, as stated by the minister.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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