Indian Wildlife Club Ezine (June, 2016)

     THE ARAVALLI CONUNDRUM

                      The shoe that fits one person pinches another-Carl Jung 

-Usha Nair                  

There is sometimes a very fine line between what is right and what appears to be right. Policy makers are often placed in the unenviable position of having to decide between conflicting interests and lobbies where both sides have genuine arguments. Take the case of environmentalists and developers-the former pleads the case for retaining and increasing the natural forests, flora and fauna; and the latter seeks to urbanize, industrialise, develop, so that people can have improved standards of living.

The current Aravalli imbroglio in India exemplifies the conflict between environmentalists and developers around the world. The ancient Aravalli Range extends for over 800 kms along Western India  and is some 1500 million years old (compared to just 50 million for the Himalaya).According to Dr Rathore and Sukhadia, at the beginning of the 20th century, 80% of the total geographical area of the Great Aravalli mountain region was under natural vegetation cover. By 2001, the vegetative cover reduced to around 7%, due to the widespread felling of the trees, extensive mining, industrialisation, climatic changes and other direct or indirect factors,causing reduced rainfall, deforestation and denudation, increased soil erosion, drying up of water aquifers and lowering of the water table. The Aravallis are today, an eco-fragile zone.

According to Greenpeace, the Aravallis are ecologically very significant, and form the catchments of rivers that originate from the hills and irrigate the plains of Northern India. They serve as an important groundwater recharge zone, providing sweet drinking water to millions of people. The Aravallis also consist of unspoilt forests like the Mangarbani which are home to nearly 300 native plant species, 120 bird species and many animals (jackal, neelgai, mongoose).The Ridge, which is a northern extension of the Aravallis, are the green lungs for the city of Delhi and protects it from the hot winds of the deserts of Rajasthan to the west. It is also responsible for earning Delhi the tag of the world's second most bird-rich capital city, after Kenya's Nairobi.[Wikipedia}.

The scrub forest is home to our National Bird

 Recently, a study paper, placed on public domain, by the Institute of Forest Management, with the objective of bringing a minimum one-third of India’s geographical area under forest cover, has got environmentalists up in arms. While defining forests, the paper excludes scrub forests, defined by the Forest Survey of India, as areas which have 0%-10% crown cover. An estimated 11500 hectares of the Aravallis, having scrub forests with less than 10% crown cover, which hitherto was declared a ‘No Construction Zone’ through judicial intervention, may not get protection, if this paper serves as the basis of the future forest policy of India.  

The resultant uproar is one of many around the world, and stems from the widely quoted/relied definition of forests, put forward by the United Nations’ FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation)in 2010, as land spanning more than 0.5 hectares with trees higher than 5 metres and a canopy cover of more than 10% or trees able to reach those thresholds in-situ. This definition is viewed as more official and international than the many other definitions of forest in different parts of the world, and is used by forest departments of national governments and even by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The importance of defining a forest is to ‘provide the conceptual, institutional, legal, and operational basis for the policies and monitoring systems that drive or enable deforestation, forest degradation, reforestation, and forest restoration (van Noordwijk and Minang). 

A forest guard on the look out for tigers in the scrub jungle of Sariska

The World Rainforest Movement alleges that FAO’s definition does not capture the complexity of forest ecosystems, but instead represents the paper and forest product industry lobbies by legitimising monoculture plantations. ’This greenwashing also opens the doors of investors and governments to constant expansion projects’ and more subsidies and profits for the sector. The Movement pleads for a reconsideration of the definition by engaging in dialogue with local communities. Saski & Putz comment that there are dangers where simple definitions are applied locally and there is need for a more nuanced and diversified approach to defining forest & reforest, to distinguish natural from planted forests, forests damaged by logging from second growth forests. In the article ‘When is a forest, a forest?’ (2016), Chazdon observes that the definition of forest varies in tandem with management perspectives and objectives, e.g. value for timber or value for carbon storage, improving livelihoods of forest dependent people, natural or planted forests, pre-existing or newly-established, continuous or fragmented, native or non-native species, etc. ‘Purpose-built and contextualized definitions are needed to support policies that successfully protect, sustain, and regrow forests at national and global scales’. 

It is evident that the definition of forest influences how we assess and interpret forest transition. If tree cover is the sole criteria, the change over time in the balance between ‘forest loss’ and ‘forest gain’ within a geographic region is extremely difficult to measure and monitor. While ‘forest loss’ is concentrated and abrupt, easily documented through satellite imagery or aerial photos; ‘forest gain’ is a highly variable, dispersed and protracted process that is challenging to document and monitor. There are those who question why the definition focuses exclusively on trees, and not on other living beings and organisms, such as plants, insects, mammals, reptiles, birds and even forest people. From the “land cover” perspective, forests are viewed as ecosystems or vegetation types supporting unique assemblages of plants and animals. But from the “land use” perspective, forests are landholdings that are legally designated as forest, regardless of their current vegetation. No single operational forest definition can, or should, embody all of these dimensions.

A pack of wild dogs hunting in the scrub forest 

While global experts will take time to evolve a suitable definition of forests, national policy makers will have to grapple with the existing ambiguities; while the march of developers trampling on the environment will continue in the absence of unambiguous norms that will clearly delineate forests. The Aravalli imbroglio is one of many such issues the world over, that falls between the letter and spirit of the definition of forest. Are we fighting a losing battle over forest conservation?