Conservation in India found its roots when the killing of animals were strictly prohibited in and around the Ashramas (hermitages) allotted to Brahmanas.
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Around the third century BC, the founder of the Mauryan empire—Chandragupta Maurya, appointed a Kupyadhyaksha or Forest Department Head. This officer was in charge of implementing the Game Laws laid down in the manuscript known as the Arhtashastra written by Kautilya, the then Prime Minister of the Mauryan Empire.
This in effect became the first official administrative document to spell out wildlife conservation measures. Chandragupta’s grandson Ashoka, besides implementing the written laws on wildlife conservation in letter, went one step further and implemented it in spirit too.
He is known to have done much for the promulgation of Buddhism during his reign, ahimsa and the non violence against all beings, animals included, is well known. His penchant for wildlife also extended to art and aesthetics, evident from examples such as the Lion Capital of Ashoka pillar in the present day Uttar Pradesh, where four lions with their back to each other can be found atop the pillar.
Unfortunately, the streak of good fortune that wildlife had enjoyed until then did not persist through the centuries. Fast forward a couple of centuries to the Mughal dynasty. When the founder of the Mughal empire, Babur, was at the helm, records indicate that rhinoceros were found spread across the Gogra River and across Peshawar. Wild elephants were found in abundance in the Karrah region, the present day Allahabad district.
The number of wildlife were not to grow exponentially. Emperor Akbar, his grandson, was an avid game hunter. He introduced a special kind of hunting known as the ‘Gamargha Hunt’. The hunt would involve hundreds of beaters with drums being sent out over a large distance to literally drive all the wild animals of the region into a circle.
Once rounded up, the King and noblemen would then move around the periphery of this circle and hunt the animals with guns, spears and arrows. Akbar bred tigers and leopards for hunting purposes in specific menageries in Fatehpur and Agra Akbar’s son and heir, Jahangir, enforced strict laws prohibiting the hunting of wild animals as a sport, and prior official sanction was required—granted only to professionals—to shoot man-eating animals.
Hunting leopards aka cheetahs, which were nearly driven to extinction during the reign of Akbar, were successfully bred in captivity by Jahangir. However, royal hunting by the ruling family did not cease. In his memoirs, Jahangir has noted that over 36 years he hunted a total 17,167 big and small game.
Around the time of his death in 1627, just when the East India Company began gaining their foothold in India, wildlife started loosing theirs. The imperialists disregarded all provincial laws set aside to protect wildlife in India. Shikars were organized to denote chivalry, bravery, and a certain status symbol among the British.
Some Maharajas and Nawabs maintained an entire corp of shikaris mainly comprised of local tribal’s with an intricate knowledge of the jungle and its inhabitants. A Mir-Shikari or expert hunter would often head this group. An invitation by the provincial ruler to hunt game within their district was seen as a bonhomous gesture towards the colonists. This misplaced camaraderie between the colonist and the princes resulted in irreversible damage to India’s wildlife.
It was then that several animals were pushed towards their last existing refuge examples of which are the sole surviving Asiatic lions population in Gujarat and the one horned rhinoceros in North-East India. It was under these circumstances that India’s first National Park, the Hailey National Park (Jim Corbett National Park) was founded in 1936, in no small measure due to the efforts of hunter turned conservationist and naturalist-Jim Corbett.
Post-independence, the first genuine need to protect wildlife in India was realized. In 1952, the Indian Wildlife Board was constituted to centralize all the rules and regulations pertinent to wildlife conservation in India, which until then deferred from state to state. In 1956, this Board passed a landmark decree that accorded all existing Game Parks the status of a Sanctuary or a National Park.
The 1960’s expose by Rakesh Sankhla and Razia for the Indian Express detailed the appalling abyss that wildlife conservation had sunk to when they exposed the trade in several hundred skins of endangered species. The need for wildlife conservation now made the shift from the government and policy makers to the general public at large.
The 1970’s bought with it two landmark events that were to influence wildlife conservation in India for decades to come. The first was the introduction of the stringent Wildlife Protection Act in 1972 and the second being Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, doing everything within her power to protect wildlife in India. Project Tiger, the largest wildlife conservation project of its time, was initiated in 1973 under her watch.
In the 1980’s, the Chipko Andolan movement by the Bishnois gained worldwide recognition for its simplicity and non-violent approach. What the Bishnois did was to surround their trees, literally hugging them, in order to protect them from anyone who came to fell them. Until today, they are involved in actively protecting blackbucks and other wildlife found in their region.
The last two decades since the 1990’s have witnessed the application of technology and science to conservation on a large scale. Wildlife forensics, telemetry, remote sensing techniques and geographic information systems were all integrated into the practice of wildlife conservation in India.
Conservation has evolved from an informal practice providing arbitrary protection to wildlife to its present avatar as a practiced art and science. If ever the need to evolve and expand it beyond its present realms was of prime necessity-then the time is now.
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- Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund.
- LEAF is supported by transnational corporations (TNCs) like Unilever plc, Amazon.com, Inc, Nestle, Airbnb, Inc as well as Emergent, a US-based non-profit.
- The world lost more than 10 million hectares of primary tropical forest cover last year, an area roughly the size of Switzerland.
- Ending tropical and subtropical forest loss by 2030 is a crucial part of meeting global climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals. Protecting tropical forests offers one of the biggest opportunities for climate action in the coming decade.
- Tropical forests are massive carbon sinks and by investing in their protection, public and private players are likely to stock up on their carbon credits.
- The LEAF coalition initiative is a step towards concretising the aims and objectives of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism.
- REDD+ was created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It monetised the value of carbon locked up in the tropical forests of most developing countries, thereby propelling these countries to help mitigate climate change.
- It is a unique initiative as it seeks to help developing countries in battling the double-edged sword of development versus ecological commitment.
- The initiative comes at a crucial time. The tropics have lost close to 12.2 million hectares (mha) of tree cover last year according to global estimates released by Global Forest Watch.
- Of this, a loss of 4.2 mha occurred within humid tropical primary forests alone. It should come as no surprise that most of these lost forests were located in the developing countries of Latin America, Africa and South Asia.
- Brazil has fared dismally on the parameter of ‘annual primary forest loss’ among all countries. It has lost 1.7 mha of primary forests that are rich storehouse of carbon. India’s estimated loss in 2020 stands at 20.8 kilo hectares.
- Between 2002-2020, Brazil’s total area of humid primary forest reduced by 7.7 per cent while India’s reduced by 3.4 per cent.
- Although the loss in India is not as drastic as in Brazil, its position is nevertheless precarious. For India, this loss is equivalent to 951 metric tonnes worth carbon dioxide emissions released in the atmosphere.
- It is important to draw comparisons between Brazil and India as both countries have adopted a rather lackadaisical attitude towards deforestation-induced climate change. The Brazilian government hardly did anything to control the massive fires that gutted the Amazon rainforest in 2019.
- It is mostly around May that forest fires peak in India. However, this year India, witnessed massive forest fires in early March in states like Odisha, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram among others.
- The European Union’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service claimed that 0.2 metric tonnes of carbon was emitted in the Uttarakhand forest fires.
- Implementation of the LEAF Coalition plan will help pump in fresh rigour among developing countries like India, that are reluctant to recognise the contributions of their forest dwelling populations in mitigating climate change.
- With the deadline for proposal submission fast approaching, India needs to act swiftly on a revised strategy.
- Although India has pledged to carry out its REDD+ commitments, it is impossible to do so without seeking knowledge from its forest dwelling population.
Context:-
At the recently concluded Leaders’ Summit on Climate in April 2021, Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund plan that shall be offered to countries committed to arrest the decline of their tropical forests by 2030.
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Why LEAF Coalition?
Brazil & India
According to the UN-REDD programme, after the energy sector, deforestation accounts for massive carbon emissions — close to 11 per cent — in the atmosphere. Rapid urbanisation and commercialisation of forest produce are the main causes behind rampant deforestation across tropical forests.
Tribes, Forests and Government
Disregarding climate change as a valid excuse for the fires, Indian government officials were quick to lay the blame for deforestation on activities of forest dwellers and even labelled them “mischievous elements” and “unwanted elements”.
Policy makers around the world have emphasised the role of indigenous tribes and local communities in checking deforestation. These communities depend on forests for their survival as well as livelihood. Hence, they understand the need to protect forests. However, by posing legitimate environmental concerns as obstacles to real development, governments of developing countries swiftly avoid protection of forests and rights of forest dwellers.
For instance, the Government of India has not been forthcoming in recognising the socio-economic, civil, political or even cultural rights of forest dwellers. According to data from the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs in December, 2020 over 55 per cent of this population has still not been granted either individual or community ownership of their lands.
To make matters worse, the government has undertaken systematic and sustained measures to render the landmark Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 ineffective in its implementation. The Act had sought to legitimise claims of forest dwellers on occupied forest land.
Various government decisions have seriously undermined the position of indigenous people within India. These include proposing amendments to the obsolete Indian Forest Act, 1927 that give forest officials the power to take away forest dwellers’ rights and to even use firearms with impunity.
There is also the Supreme Court’s order of February, 2019 directing state governments to evict illegal encroachers of forest land or millions of forest dwellers inhabiting forests since generations as a measure to conserve wildlife. Finally, there is the lack of data on novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) deaths among the forest dwelling population;
Tardy administration, insufficient supervision, apathetic attitude and a lack of political intent defeat the cause of forest dwelling populations in India, thereby directly affecting efforts at arresting deforestation.
Way Forward
Tuntiak Katan, a global indigenous leader from Ecuador and general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, aptly indicated the next steps at the Climate Summit:
“The first step is recognition of land rights. The second step is the recognition of the contributions of local communities and indigenous communities, meaning the contributions of indigenous peoples.We also need recognition of traditional knowledge practices in order to fight climate change”
Perhaps India can begin by taking the first step.