Press Clips-3 Index
100. Enjoy the TEN most beautiful Tree Tunnels in the World !
101. OP-ED
CONTRIBUTOR - China
102.
The Virtual Middle Class Rises - OP-ED
COLUMNIST - TNYT
103.
Salinated Water
104.
Development minus green shoots
Enjoy the TEN most beautiful Tree Tunnels in the World !
The Longest Living organisms on Earth, beautify and protect our environment, by providing Color, Shelter, and Shade.
10. Cherry Blossom Tunnel, GermanyPhoto — LinkEach spring, a peaceful street, located in the German city of Bonn, transforms into an enchanting cherry blossom tunnel.Photographer Marcel Bednarz captured this stunning sight of cherry blossoms in full bloom.He explained to me that there are actually two streets in Bonn where cherry trees are planted,but the one you see in the above picture is called Heerstraße. As you may know, the averagecherry blossom lasts only between 7 and 10 days, depending on weather conditions.
09. Rua Gonçalo de Carvalho, BrasilNumber nine goes to Brazil’s green tunnel from Porto Alegre, Rua Gonçalo de Carvalho.
According to a decree signed in 2006 by former mayor Joseph Fogaça,
this beautiful street is part of the country’s historical, cultural, ecological and environmental heritage.There are more than one hundred towering Tipuana (Rosewood) trees along Rua Gonçalo de Carvalho.
The great shade trees stretch over three city blocks, which is a good thing for the city’s overall health.
Did you know that trees, properly planted around buildings, can reduce air conditioning demands by up to 30%?
08. Autumn Tree Tunnel, USAPhoto — LinkPhotographed in glorious autumn colors by Kevin McNeal, this tree tunnel is simply astonishing!
The picture was taken on the way up to Smuggler’s Notch, a Vermont state park.The eye-catching foliage starts changing its color in the northern region,
in response to many environmental factors, and spreads south as the fall season advances.
07. Ginkgo Tree Tunnel, JapanGingko biloba is a highly venerated tree in Japanese culture. Six ginkgo trees survived the Hiroshima bombing,continuing to grow despite facing so many challenges, and are still alive today.
Therefore, the Japanese regard the gingko as “the bearer of hope”.
It is also known as “the survivor” or “the living fossil.”Around 65,000 ginkgoes grace Tokyo’s streets, gardens and parks today.
According to some people who visited Tokyo, the tunnel you see in the above picture
is located in the outer garden of Meiji Shrine.
06. Yew Tree Tunnel, UKThe medieval Aberglasney House features one of the most beautiful gardens in Wales, UK.
They have been an inspiration to writers since 1470. The Yew Tunnel is a popular tourist attraction in this area.Believe it or not, it took nine years of pruning to restore this unique archway. “Years of neglect had left it unsafeand with a perilous future, as the once formally clipped structure had grown even higher than thetop of the Mansion itself. It is so nice to see it looking invigorated and healthy again,
I had every confidence that with careful restoration it would help its future longevity,
but I have to confess that it did look drastic at the time,” declared Graham Rankin,
one of Aberglasney’s directors.The Yew Tunnel is thought to have been planted by the Dyer family of Aberglasney, during the 18th century.
05. The Dark Hedges, Northern IrelandPhoto — LinkTucked away in the county of Antrim, these beautiful beech trees are thought to be around 300 years old.According to local records, James Stuart planted the 150 beech trees in the 18th century,
to impress guests as they approached his splendid property, Gracehill House.Legend tells that the spirit of a maid, who lived in a neighboring mansion and diedin mysterious circumstances hundreds of years ago, haunts the country road. “Grey Lady”silently floats along the road and quickly disappears as she reaches the last beech tree.
04. Bamboo Path, JapanThe Sagano Bamboo Forest is located in Arashiyama, a nationally-designated historic site.
The pathway you see in the above picture is 500m long, and runs through one of Japan’smost beautiful bamboo forests. No wonder the Agency for Cultural Affairs declared Arashiyama a “Place of Scenic Beauty”.
This forest is close to many famous temple and shrines, including the Adashino Nenbutsu-ji Temple.The sound the wind makes, as it blows through the tall bamboo trees,
has been voted by the Japanese authorities as one of 100 must-preserve sounds of Japan.
03. Tunnel of Love, UkraineThe Ukrainian Tunnel of Love is actually a two-mile sector of private railway that serves a woodworking plantnear Klevan, a small city located in western Ukraine.
I read somewhere that couples pass through this romantic tunnel to make a wish.
The myth goes that, if their love is strong and pure, the wish will come true.May all of your wishes come true, but watch out for the train! It runs three times a day through the leafy tunnel.
02. Jacarandas Walk, South AfricaOver 10 million trees keep South Africa’s largest city green. According to several unofficial sources, Johannesburg is hometo the world’s largest man-made forest.There are at least 49 species of Jacaranda, most of them native to South America (particularly in Uruguay, Brazil, Peru& Argentina), and the Caribbean basin.
The tropical trees were imported to South Africa over one hundred years ago.October is the month when the flowers of thousands of Jacaranda trees are in full blossom.
This spectacular tree tunnel is located either in Johannesburg or Pretoria,
the Jacaranda City where 70,000+ Jacarandas add vivid splashes of purple-blue to the urban landscape.
01. Wisteria Tunnel, JapanAs soon as the cherry blossom season ends, the gorgeous Wisteria flowers, that hang in grape-like clusters,
take their turn on the Japanese floral calendar. The Fuji Matsuri, or Wisteria Festival, is celebrated each springin Tokyo, Shizuoka, and Okazaki.The Ashikaga Flower Park is one of the best places to admire different varieties of wisteria,including double-petaled wisteria, giant wisteria and yellow, white, light pink or purple variants of wisteria.
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OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
China’s Hydro-Hegemony
By BRAHMA CHELLANEY
Published: February 7, 2013
New Delhi.
ASIA is the world’s most water-stressed continent, a situation compounded by China’s hydro-supremacy in the region. Beijing’s recent decision to build a slew of giant new dams on rivers flowing to other countries is thus set to roil riparian relations.
China — which already boasts more large dams than the rest of the world put together and has unveiled a mammoth $635-billion fresh investment in water infrastructure over the next decade — has emerged as the key obstacle to building institutionalized collaboration on shared water resources in Asia.
In contrast to the bilateral water treaties between many of its neighbors, China rejects the concept of a water-sharing arrangement or joint, rules-based management of common resources.
For example, in rejecting the 1997 United Nations convention that lays down rules on shared water resources, Beijing asserted its claim that an upstream power has the right to assert absolute territorial sovereignty over the waters on its side of the international boundary — or the right to divert as much water as it wishes for its needs, irrespective of the effects on a downriver state.
Today, by building megadams and reservoirs in its borderlands, China is working to re-engineer the flows of major rivers that are the lifeline of lower riparian states.
China is the source of transboundary riverflows to the largest number of countries in the world — from Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to the states in the Indochina peninsula and Southern Asia. This pre-eminence resulted from its absorption of the ethnic-minority homelands that now make up 60 percent of its landmass and are the origin of all the international rivers flowing out of Chinese-held territory. No other country in the world comes close to the hydro-hegemony that China has established.
Since the last decade, China’s dam building has been moving from dam-saturated internal rivers to international rivers. Most of the new megaprojects designated recently by China’s state council as priority ventures are concentrated in the country’s seismically active southwest, which is largely populated by ethnic minorities. Such dam building is triggering new ethnic tensions over displacement and submergence.
The state council approved an array of new dams on the Salween, Brahmaputra and Mekong rivers, which originate on the Tibetan plateau and flow to South Asia and Southeast Asia. The unveiling of projects on the Brahmaputra evoked Indian diplomatic concern at a time when water has emerged as a new Chinese-Indian divide, while the Salween projects end the suspension of dam building on that river announced eight years ago.
The Salween — known in Chinese as Nu Jiang, or the “Angry River” — is Asia’s last largely free-flowing river, running through deep, spectacular gorges and glaciated peaks on its way to Burma and Thailand. Its upstream basin is inhabited by at lease a dozen different ethnic groups and rated as one of the world’s most biologically diverse regions, home to more than 5,000 plant species and nearly half of China’s animal species. No sooner had this stunning region, known as the Three Parallel Rivers, been added to the World Heritage List by Unesco in 2003 than Beijing unveiled plans for a cascade of dams near the area.
The international furor that followed led Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to suspend work. The reversal of that suspension, significantly, comes before Wen and President Hu Jintao step down as part of the country’s power transition.
The third international river cited by the state council in its new project approvals has already been a major target of Chinese dam building. Chinese engineers have constructed six megadams on the Mekong, including the 4,200-megawatt Xiaowan, and a greater water appropriator, the 5,850-megawatt Nuozhadu, whose first generator began producing electricity last September.
Asia needs institutionalized water cooperation because it awaits a future made hotter and drier by climate and environmental change and resource depletion. The continent’s water challenges have been exacerbated by growing consumption, unsustainable irrigation practices, rapid industrialization, pollution and geopolitical shifts.
Asia has morphed into the most likely flash point for water wars. Several countries are currently engaged in dam building on transnational rivers. The majority of these dams are being financed and built by Chinese state entities. Most Chinese-aided dam projects in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar are designed to pump electricity into China’s southern electricity grid, with the lower riparians bearing the environmental and social costs.
But it is China’s dam-building spree at home — reflected in the fact that it boasts half of the 50,000 large dams in the world — that carries the greatest international implications and obstructs the development of an Asian rules-based order.
China has made the control and manipulation of natural-river flows a fulcrum of its power and economic development. Although promoting multilateralism on the world stage, it has given the cold shoulder to multilateral cooperation among basin nations — as symbolized, for example, by the Mekong River Commission — and rebuffed efforts by states sharing its rivers to seek bilateral water-sharing arrangements.
Beijing already has significant financial, trade and political leverage over most of its neighbors. Now, by building an asymmetric control over cross-border flows, it is seeking to have its hand on Asia’s water tap.
Given China’s unique riparian position and role, it will not be possible to transform the Asian water competition into cooperation without Beijing playing a leadership role to develop a rules-based system.
Brahma Chellaney is the author of “Water: Asia’s New Battleground” and of the forthcoming book “Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.”
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Subject: Fwd: How on earth????..some real estate!!!!
DON'T WANT VISITORS?
JUST UNHOOK THE CABLE.
MOST PEOPLE USE TREES FOR A WINDBREAK
IF YOU HEAR A BRANCH CRACK....
HOW DID THEY GET
THAT CAR IN THERE?LONG CLIMB
AFTER A DAY'S WORK !
TREE BELOW....
FLOWERS ABOVE....
SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST WEIRD!
NOT DURING HURRICANE SEASON,THANK YOU
GOT A LITTLE PROBLEM WITH DAMPNESS
@ YOUR HOUSE?
I'VE HEARD OF PEOPLE'S BRIDGEWORK
BUT THIS IS
RIDICULOUS!
BETTER TALK TO
AL GORE
ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING
__________________________________
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Virtual Middle Class Rises
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: February 2, 2013
NEW DELHI
Josh Haner/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
Readers’ Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
I ENCOUNTERED something on this trip to India that I had never met before: a whole new political community — India’s “virtual middle class.” Its emergence explains a lot about the rise of social protests here, as well as in places like China and Egypt. It is one of the most exciting things happening on the planet. Historically, we have associated democratic revolutions with rising middle classes achieving certain levels of per capita annual income — say, $10,000 — so people can worry less about basic food and housing and more about being treated as citizens with rights and with a voice in their own futures. But here’s what’s fascinating: The massive diffusion of powerful, cheap computing power via cellphones and tablets over the last decade has dramatically lowered the costs of connectivity and education — so much so that many more people in India, China and Egypt, even though they’re still just earning a few dollars a day, now have access to the kind of technologies and learning previously associated solely with the middle class.
That’s why India today has a 300-million-person middle class and another 300-million-person virtual middle class, who, though still very poor, are increasingly demanding the rights, roads, electricity, uncorrupted police and good governance normally associated with rising middle classes. This is putting more pressure than ever on India’s elected politicians to get their governance act together.
“Thanks to technology and the spread of education, more and more people are being empowered at lower and lower levels of income than ever before, so they think and act as if they were in the middle class, demanding human security and dignity and citizens’ rights,” explained Khalid Malik, the director of the U.N.’s Human Development Report Office and author of the book “Why Has China Grown So Fast for So Long?” “This is a tectonic shift. The Industrial Revolution was a 10-million-person story. This is a couple-of-billion-person story.”
And it’s not just driven by the 900 million cellphones in use in India today or the 400 million bloggers in China. The United States Agency for International Development office here in New Delhi connected me with a group of Indian social entrepreneurs the U.S. is supporting, and the power of the tools they are putting in the hands of India’s virtual middle class at low prices is jaw-dropping. Gram Power is creating smart microgrids and smart meters to provide reliable, scalable power for Indian rural areas, where 600 million Indians do not have regular (or any) electricity with which to work, read and learn. For 20 cents a day, Gram Power offers villagers a prepaid electricity card that can power all their home appliances. Healthpoint Services is providing safe drinking water for a family of six for 5 cents a day and telemedicine consultations for 20 cents a visit. VisionSpring is now distributing examinations and eyeglasses to India’s poor for $2 to $3 each. The Institute for Reproductive Health is alerting women of their fertile days each month with text messages, indicating when unprotected sex should be avoided to prevent unwanted pregnancies. And Digital Green is providing low-cost communications systems for Indian farmers and women’s groups to show each their best practices through digital films projected on a dirt floor.
These technologies still need scale, but they are on their way. And they are enabling millions more Indians to at least feel as if they are middle class and the political empowerment that goes with that, says Nayan Chanda, who runs the YaleGlobal Online Magazine and is co-editor of “A World Connected: Globalization in the 21st Century.”
In December, a 23-year-old Indian woman — whose father worked double shifts as an airport baggage handler, making about $200 a month so his daughter could go to school to become a physiotherapist — was gang-raped on a bus after she and a male friend had gone to a movie. She later died from injuries sustained in the rape.
She was a high-aspiring member of this new virtual Indian middle class, and her brutal rape and subsequent death triggered nationwide protests for better governance. “It is one of those turning points in history when a citizenry, so far pleased with economic gain, wants more than material comfort,” said Chanda. “They want recognition of their rights; they want quality of life and, most importantly, the good governance they have come to expect by watching the world.”
Ditto China. In December, noted Chanda, “when a Chinese censor in Guangzhou committed the unprecedented intrusion by physically entering the premises of Southern Weekend paper and rewriting their New Year editorial — turning a critical one into a panegyric of the Communist Party — Chinese journalists exploded. For the first time in history, they publicly demanded the resignation of the censor and China’s Twitter, Weibo, lit up with anger.”
And, of course, the Arab Awakening was triggered, not by middle-class college students, but by an aspiring-to-be-in-the-middle-class Tunisian vegetable seller who was abused by corrupt police. Leaders beware: Your people don’t need to be in the middle class anymore, in economic terms, to have the education, tools and mind-set of the middle class — to feel entitled to a two-way conversation and to be treated like citizens with real rights and decent governance.
NEW DELHI
Josh Haner/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman
Readers’ Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
I ENCOUNTERED something on this trip to India that I had never met before: a whole new political community — India’s “virtual middle class.” Its emergence explains a lot about the rise of social protests here, as well as in places like China and Egypt. It is one of the most exciting things happening on the planet. Historically, we have associated democratic revolutions with rising middle classes achieving certain levels of per capita annual income — say, $10,000 — so people can worry less about basic food and housing and more about being treated as citizens with rights and with a voice in their own futures. But here’s what’s fascinating: The massive diffusion of powerful, cheap computing power via cellphones and tablets over the last decade has dramatically lowered the costs of connectivity and education — so much so that many more people in India, China and Egypt, even though they’re still just earning a few dollars a day, now have access to the kind of technologies and learning previously associated solely with the middle class.
That’s why India today has a 300-million-person middle class and another 300-million-person virtual middle class, who, though still very poor, are increasingly demanding the rights, roads, electricity, uncorrupted police and good governance normally associated with rising middle classes. This is putting more pressure than ever on India’s elected politicians to get their governance act together.
“Thanks to technology and the spread of education, more and more people are being empowered at lower and lower levels of income than ever before, so they think and act as if they were in the middle class, demanding human security and dignity and citizens’ rights,” explained Khalid Malik, the director of the U.N.’s Human Development Report Office and author of the book “Why Has China Grown So Fast for So Long?” “This is a tectonic shift. The Industrial Revolution was a 10-million-person story. This is a couple-of-billion-person story.”
And it’s not just driven by the 900 million cellphones in use in India today or the 400 million bloggers in China. The United States Agency for International Development office here in New Delhi connected me with a group of Indian social entrepreneurs the U.S. is supporting, and the power of the tools they are putting in the hands of India’s virtual middle class at low prices is jaw-dropping. Gram Power is creating smart microgrids and smart meters to provide reliable, scalable power for Indian rural areas, where 600 million Indians do not have regular (or any) electricity with which to work, read and learn. For 20 cents a day, Gram Power offers villagers a prepaid electricity card that can power all their home appliances. Healthpoint Services is providing safe drinking water for a family of six for 5 cents a day and telemedicine consultations for 20 cents a visit. VisionSpring is now distributing examinations and eyeglasses to India’s poor for $2 to $3 each. The Institute for Reproductive Health is alerting women of their fertile days each month with text messages, indicating when unprotected sex should be avoided to prevent unwanted pregnancies. And Digital Green is providing low-cost communications systems for Indian farmers and women’s groups to show each their best practices through digital films projected on a dirt floor.
These technologies still need scale, but they are on their way. And they are enabling millions more Indians to at least feel as if they are middle class and the political empowerment that goes with that, says Nayan Chanda, who runs the YaleGlobal Online Magazine and is co-editor of “A World Connected: Globalization in the 21st Century.”
In December, a 23-year-old Indian woman — whose father worked double shifts as an airport baggage handler, making about $200 a month so his daughter could go to school to become a physiotherapist — was gang-raped on a bus after she and a male friend had gone to a movie. She later died from injuries sustained in the rape.
She was a high-aspiring member of this new virtual Indian middle class, and her brutal rape and subsequent death triggered nationwide protests for better governance. “It is one of those turning points in history when a citizenry, so far pleased with economic gain, wants more than material comfort,” said Chanda. “They want recognition of their rights; they want quality of life and, most importantly, the good governance they have come to expect by watching the world.”
Ditto China. In December, noted Chanda, “when a Chinese censor in Guangzhou committed the unprecedented intrusion by physically entering the premises of Southern Weekend paper and rewriting their New Year editorial — turning a critical one into a panegyric of the Communist Party — Chinese journalists exploded. For the first time in history, they publicly demanded the resignation of the censor and China’s Twitter, Weibo, lit up with anger.”
And, of course, the Arab Awakening was triggered, not by middle-class college students, but by an aspiring-to-be-in-the-middle-class Tunisian vegetable seller who was abused by corrupt police. Leaders beware: Your people don’t need to be in the middle class anymore, in economic terms, to have the education, tools and mind-set of the middle class — to feel entitled to a two-way conversation and to be treated like citizens with real rights and decent governance.
http://www.pub.gov.sg/water/Pages/DesalinatedWater.aspx
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Published: February 13, 2013 01:21
Development minus green shoots
The HinduRoads and canals are just superstructures built upon the real infrastructure represented in human and natural capital. Photo: T.R. Shankar Raman
By exempting some projects on forest land from gram sabha consent, the government has undermined the rights of local communities and their crucial role in protecting the environment
In early February, the Ministry of Environment and Forests partially revoked a crucial order it had issued in August 2009, which made the consent of gram sabhas mandatory for projects seeking diversion of forest lands for non-forest purposes. Now, the ministry has exempted “projects like construction of roads, canals, laying of pipelines/optical fibres and transmission lines etc. [sic] where linear diversion of forest land in several villages are involved” from obtaining the consent of the gram sabhas concerned. The requirement for gram sabha consent, in the 2009 order, was provided to uphold the rights of forest-dwelling communities, in keeping with the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (or Forest Rights Act) and duly incorporated in guidelines issued by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs in July 2012.
Rejecting bauxite mining
The 2009 order had empowered forest-dwelling communities to reject projects harming the local environment, livelihoods and culture. The best example comes from the affected gram sabhas of the Dongaria Kondh and Kutia Kondh tribes in Odisha refusing their consent to Vedanta’s bauxite mining project in the Niyamgiri hills. Until the recent order, the Forest Rights Act and its requirement of gram sabha consent had been publicly supported by both the ministers for Environment and Forests, and Tribal Affairs even in the face of sustained pressure from more powerful quarters in government and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
In December 2012, the Tribal Affairs Minister wrote to Ms Jayanthi Natarajan, his colleague in Paryavaran Bhavan. The emphatic letter stated: “... the consent of the gram sabha, with at least a 50% quorum (as stated in the Rules and in the 2009 order) is the bare minimum that is required to comply with the Act before any forest area can be diverted, or destroyed.” A handwritten postscript said: “any dilution of the above mentioned circular of 2009 will have an adverse impact on the ‘Vedanta case,’ which is sub-judice.” One can imagine the pressures when the same Tribal Affairs Minister, weeks later, in a letter to the Power Minister, was forced to set aside this requirement of gram sabha consent for power lines. Following this, the environment ministry revoked the requirement for an even broader range of linear projects.
Dangerous consequences
When two central ministries, one tasked to protect the environment and forests, and the other to empower tribal and forest peoples, are strong-armed into relinquishing even the “bare minimum” required to implement the government’s flagship forest rights law, it utterly discredits the United Progressive Alliance’s commitment to “inclusion” in its proclaimed agenda of inclusive economic growth. Further, the consequences of this single action go well beyond the intents of those who embark on it.
Linear infrastructure projects, such as roads and power lines, while often integral to growth and development, can also have negative effects. A 2010 background paper, prepared at the initiative of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), lists a range of ecological impacts caused by linear infrastructure intrusions in natural areas: habitat loss and fragmentation, the spread of invasive alien species, fires, animal mortality (e.g., roadkills, electrocution), disruption of animal corridors, increased developmental and hunting pressures, and an increase in pollution and other disturbances. Social impacts may include insensitive developments in tribal areas, encroachments and land-grabbing along roads (witnessed recently in the Aravallis around New Delhi), changes in local communities due to the entry of a large workforce from other regions, and an increase in tourism, and garbage. It is therefore important that gram sabhas and rural communities retain their right to provide consent after due consideration of how such projects may benefit or affect them.
The recent order also appears unjustified and arbitrary because the criteria for arriving at exemption for linear projects and what is meant by “several villages” are unclear. No evidence is provided as to whether gram sabha consent was in fact hindering vital development projects. Arguably, for large projects that involve a large number of gram sabhas, a situation where dissent from one or a few gram sabhas holds up a project that most other gram sabhas want, may be undesirable.
Yet, revoking the requirement for local consent is an undemocratic step that also removes opportunities for critical exploration of alternatives, such as realignments, or other ways of mitigating a project’s ecological and social impacts. Instead of viewing local consent as impeding development, it needs to be seen as a legitimate avenue for collective bargaining and peaceful action, vastly preferable to situations where forest communities are forced to turn to violent protest. In ways that an exclusively bureaucratic clearance process can never achieve, gram sabha consent can ensure that citizens are truly made partners in development and its benefits actually flow to the poorest.
The recent order of the environment ministry also conflates projects such as roads, power lines, and canals (not to mention the ominous ‘etc.’). Bundling them together just because they are all linear is a serious error as the effects of roads or canals on the environment or forest cover and on local communities are substantially different from the effects of power lines. For example, roads through forests can lead to soil erosion and wildlife deaths through collision with vehicles. Roads and canals can change hydrological and agricultural patterns, unlike power lines. While some social or environmental effects may be common to different kinds of linear projects, the distinctions are serious.
For more balance
Another danger in the order is that it weakens and vitiates the process of settling rights under the Forest Rights Act, which, as many rights groups have pointed out, has not been progressing smoothly, especially in areas where economic interests vie with the claims of forest dwellers. The ministry’s exemption affects rights settlement processes and may lead to an unfair rejection of claims. An overarching concern is the issue of precedent. If the Forest Rights Act can be diluted of its most crucial provision for some categories of projects, what is to prevent a cascade of claims for other exceptions, as are already emerging in the case of mining projects? This leads to a slippery slope that can ultimately defeat the entire spirit and intent of this rights-enabling legislation. In the words of the previous Environment Minister, Mr. Jairam Ramesh, “The question before the country is very, very simple. Are these laws to be enforced or are they to just adorn the statute books, honoured more in their breach than in their observance?”
The gains of economic growth frequently carry environmental and social costs. Instead of denying their existence or making arbitrary exemptions for projects, the trade-offs need to be acknowledged, making them explicit and transparent to citizens, strengthening the democratic foundations of decision-making, and creating more efficient and faster processes so that projects that further inclusive growth and development are not unduly hindered.
India’s remaining forest cover, particularly natural forests with native species (in contrast to planted forests of alien species such as eucalyptus), has declined in the last few decades. Remnant natural forests continue to be threatened by loss, degradation and conversion. Conserving remaining forest tracts is critical to safeguard India’s threatened biodiversity, watersheds, and minimise conflicts between people and wildlife, besides providing for vital livelihood and resource needs of forest-dwelling communities. When large infrastructure projects such as roads and canals run roughshod over rural communities without paying heed to social and environmental costs, society will only stand to lose in the long run. In that sense, even the term ‘infrastructure’ for such projects is a misnomer, as roads and canals are merely superstructures built upon the real infrastructure represented in human and natural capital.
The present order of the ministry, masterminded by the PMO, to dilute legal requirements meant to safeguard forest dwellers and the environment, is a move towards greater opacity and central control, favouring corporate-industrial interests over local people and marginalised communities. Where the government could be working to reconcile the needs of development and environment, it is instead driving further wedges between the two.
(T.R. Shankar Raman and M.D. Madhusudan are scientists with the Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore. E-mails: trsr@ncf-india.org; mdm@ncf-india.org)
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