Centre Trying to Create ‘Rubber Stamps’ for Faster Wildlife Clearance, Says Parliamentary Panel

News Click | Ayaskant Das | 24 May 2022
Experts say amendments proposed to Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 are part of a policy to promote ease of doing business.

New Delhi: A Parliamentary panel headed by former Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has criticised an attempt by the Narendra Modi-led government to tweak India’s wildlife protection laws. The changes are being made to secure definitive approvals for industrial projects in ecologically fragile areas rich in flora and fauna, the panel said.

In a report recently submitted to the Parliament, the panel has noted that committees constituted for wildlife clearances at the state level, as envisaged by the central government, might end up as mere “rubber stamps” if independent members are not included in them.

The panel, a 29-member Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change, recommended the inclusion of at least three institutional members and the Director of Wildlife Institute of India into these committees. In its evaluation of the Wildlife Protection Amendment Bill 2021, the panel expressed apprehension that the state-level panels that have been proposed “will be packed with official members, and may end up being a rubber stamp for faster clearances of projects.”

Conservationists and experts have, at the same time, cast aspersions on the draft Bill for its potential to enable corporates extraction of precious natural resources of the country after sidelining local communities.

The panel has recommended the inclusion of at least one-third of all non-official members of the respective State Boards of Wildlife (SBWL) into the aforementioned proposed state-level committees. Through the amendment Bill, which was introduced in Parliament in December 2021, the central government has sought to empower each SBWL to constitute its own Standing Committee for the purpose of “exercising certain delegated powers and duties”. However, as per the Bill, these standing committees will consist of the vice-chairperson and member-secretary of the respective SBWL. A maximum number of ten additional members can be inducted into the Standing Committee by the vice-chairperson from amongst the members of the SBWL, the Bill further suggested.

“The Bill again envisages that each Board or its Standing Committee will be free to create various committees, sub-committees or study groups from time to time for the proper discharge of functions. It is necessary that the respective SBWL approves all recommendations or decisions by these committees or sub-committees before implementation,” said Debi Goenka of the Mumbai-based environmental organisation Conservation Action Trust. He further said, “But firstly, over-arching powers proposed to be assigned to the vice-chairperson of respective SBWLs in the appointment of Standing Committees should be curtailed. Members of each Standing Committee should either be appointed by the National Board for Wildlife or the respective SBWL.”

The proposal to constitute standing committees of state-level wildlife boards, by amending the Wildllife (Protection) Act, 1972, comes in the backdrop of the fact that the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) has not met even once after the formation of its Standing Committee in the year 2014. As per the Act’s provisions, this central-level Board has to mandatorily meet at least twice a year. Immediately after being elected to power following the massive victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the general elections of 2014, one of the first tasks undertaken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was to reconstitute the composition of the NBWL and constitute a Standing Committee for the purpose of conducting appraisals of infrastructure projects located in areas rich in wildlife.

“We have further suggested imposition of a ban on the use of mechanical earth moving equipment within protected areas, for example, wildlife sanctuaries or reserved forests, except in exceptional circumstances like natural disasters. This is intended to discourage civil works within the protected areas which seem to be proliferating because of liberal availability of funds with forest departments for the purpose of compensatory afforestation,” Goenka further added.

The Bill has also been criticised for the attempt to reduce the number of Schedules – containing lists of protected species of plants and animals – from the original Act.

At present, the Act has six Schedules in all; one is devoted exclusively to specially protected plants and four are dedicated to specially protected animals, while another schedule contains a list of vermin species. (Vermin refers to parasitic animals that carry disease or destroy food).

However, the amendment Bill seeks to reduce the total number of schedules to four: the number of Schedules for specially protected animals has been sought to be reduced to two, with one containing a list of species that need greater protection. The Bill completely eliminates the Schedule containing a list of vermin species and instead seeks the introduction of a new Schedule for specimens listed in the Appendices under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

A number of environmental organisations, including the Conservation Action Trust, have recommended a separate Act to implement the CITES provisions, which is a multilateral treaty to regulate the international trade of species of endangered plants and wildlife to ensure their survival. However, the Jairam Ramesh-headed panel, on its part, recommended an amendment to the Biological Diversity Act, 2002, to implement the provisions of CITES in India.

“The [Parliamentary Standing] Committee [has] observed that amending the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 would be the most appropriate way of implementing CITES, as the mandate of CITES is sustainable use of biodiversity. It also observed that the approach under the Bill will make the principal Act complicated and might introduce contradictions,” the panel noted in its report.

As the name suggests, the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 contains provisions to conserve biological diversity in India, sustainable use of its components and equitable sharing of benefits from biological resources.

In its present form, the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 entrusts the responsibility of controlling, managing, and maintaining wildlife sanctuaries with each state government’s respective Chief Wild Life Warden. The Bill envisages the discharge of these responsibilities according to sanctuary-specific management plans. These plans will be prepared as per guidelines of the central government after due consultation with concerned Gram Sabhas in areas with predominantly tribal populations; in such places, provisions of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 – known popularly as the Forest Rights Act, 2006 – are applicable.

“Interestingly, the Bill speaks about local self-governance in Schedule 5 areas with respect to Gram Sabhas under Forest Rights Act but omits mention of the PESA Act [Panchayat (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996],” Rebbapragada Ravi of MM&P (mines, minerals and PEOPLE), an alliance of individuals and communities affected by mining, told the Newsclick. Ravi added, “It is a fact too well known that areas rich in wildlife in India are also those that not only have a pre-ponderance of various Scheduled Tribe communities but are also rich in rare and precious natural resources like minerals. This move is indicative of the trend to concentrate power with the central and state governments and make it easy for the mining industry to acquire and expand their operations under the policy of ease of business. The central government is paving the way for corporates to easily exploit minerals in the country, by a series of amendments to the environmental and mining regulatory regime in India,”

The PESA Act is a law enacted by the Union government to ensure local self-governance through traditional Gram Sabhas for people living in Scheduled Areas of the country. Scheduled Areas are notified under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution of India for their economic backwardness and predominance of the Scheduled Tribe population.

The move to amend the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 comes close on the heels of largescale changes to laws governing forest conservation in the country as proposed by the central government. The Centre has proposed to do away with several regulatory requirements needed to divert forestland for non-forest use in a draft amendment to the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, which was released in October last year.

Conservationists had earlier flagged amendments proposed to forest laws on the ground that it was intended to benefit corporates in the ease of doing business.

Whose minerals are they anyway?

Mongabay | Sep 10, 2020

Over the past few months, the government of India has been focusing on the mining sector to revive the country’s economy but it is feared that it could mean a troubled time ahead for communities involved and environment.
However, the major question is whether such a push is in line with the National Mineral Policy 2019 of India which talks about the concept of inter-generational equity as far as mineral wealth is concerned.
The organisations involved with the communities that are impacted by the mining believe that protection and welfare of tribal people and poor are rarely the focus area of mining plans which are heavily focused on higher revenues.
To tackle the already slowing economy, whose condition further deteriorated after COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian government is pushing for more mining. But is this push for more revenue in line with the principles in India’s mining policy that talk about sustainable mining and minerals being a part of shared inheritance with future generations?

Over the past few months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and various other ministers in his government have emphasised that the push for mining including coal will result in additional investments and revenue worth hundreds of billions of rupees. The government has already unveiled more reforms in the mining sector.

Meanwhile, communities that are already struggling with land conflicts, pollution issues (water, air and soil), health impacts, continue suffering even as new areas that will be opened for mining come with a potential threat to the local ecology, including biodiversity, forests and the communities.

Odisha-based tribal rights leader Deme Oram said that communities whose areas have been destroyed due to the greed of mining companies and the state authorities are helpless. “There are many Supreme Court orders which state that mining in scheduled areas (as per the Indian constitution), should be done through cooperatives that have tribal communities as members. But it is rarely done and such orders are openly violated by states to favour corporates and money bags,” Oram told Mongabay-India. He is the member of Mines, Mineral and People (MMP), an alliance spread across 18 states with more than 100 grassroots groups and about 20 diverse support organisations.

The concept of minerals being part of the shared inheritance is mentioned in the Indian government’s National Mineral Policy 2019. It noted that “natural resources, including minerals, are a shared inheritance where the State is a trustee on behalf of the people and therefore it is imperative that allocation of mineral resources is done in a fair and transparent manner to ensure equitable distribution of mineral wealth to sub-serve the common good.”

The policy had stressed that mining needs to be carried out in an environmentally sustainable manner keeping stakeholders’ participation, and devolution of benefits to the mining-affected persons with the overall objective of maintaining a high level of trust between all stakeholders.

But the on ground situation shows that rarely happens as conflicts related to land, health and ecology in the mining sector are found in abundance. Once the mining starts, the life of the communities in and around mining areas takes a turn for the worse and even when the mining is over its after-effects have shown to continue to impact people. Increasingly, the concept of just transition is being discussed which deals with the discussion around sustainable mining and the impact of operational mines on people and ecology.

“Even if tribal communities form a cooperative, or they get together and start mining there is no one who will buy products from them and let them flourish. Moreover, when mining is done by corporates the poor people are exploited and the local ecology (air, water and soil) is completely destroyed. People are left to suffer and they have nowhere to go. The state authorities whose prime responsibility is to protect the rights of people are working for corporates. Even the District Mineral Foundation funds, whose control should have been with communities, is being used by authorities for work like roads etc which should have been done for those people irrespective of the DMF,” said Oram, who focuses on land rights of the tribal people and governance in Fifth Schedule areas. Fifth Schedule areas are tribal-dominated areas identified under the Indian Constitution where special care is taken for rights and welfare of tribal communities.

For instance, he said, around 20 years ago, when sponge iron plants started in Odisha, people were told that it would bring development. “The only thing those plants have done is to destroy the lives of people and air, water and soil. In such a scenario, communities have no place to think about who owns the mineral wealth and how that should be preserved for future generations. They are busy saving their present and trying to earn their livelihood,” said Oram.

Is sustainable mining the keyword?
India’s National Mineral Policy 2019 had also emphasised that mining operations shall not ordinarily be taken up in identified ecologically fragile and biologically rich areas. It had noted that the government shall identify such areas that are critically fragile in terms of ecology and declare as ‘in-violate areas’ or ‘no-go areas’ out of bounds for mining and with a view to reducing pollution, carbon footprint and operational costs, use of renewable sources of energy at mining sites will be encouraged through appropriate incentives.

It had even suggested an inter-ministerial mechanism to decide the limits on the extent of mining activities that should be permitted including a detailed study for assessing the ceiling of annual excavation of minerals, considering the availability of mineral resources, the carrying capacity of the region, and the macro-environmental impact on the region while also “keeping in mind the principles of sustainable development and intergenerational equity and all other relevant factors.”

Rahul Basu, who is the research director at Goa Foundation, a Goa-based environmental group, said that it is important for governments to recognise that since natural resources, including minerals, are common wealth held in trust, not proprietary assets of the government in power, all the duties of a trustee apply to the government, including the duty to protect the corpus of the trust, prevent theft, loss or waste, and a duty to treat beneficiaries equally.

On the government’s efforts to boost the mining sector, Basu said it is “absurd to think increasing mining will lead to an economic revival.”

“Average daily employment in non-fuel major mineral mines is only around 100,000, around 0.25 percent of India’s workforce. And mining is steadily getting more mechanised. Further, if we see minerals as inherited wealth, surely it is better to purchase the minerals we need from others and keep our own minerals safely for our future generation,” Basu told Mongabay-India.

He explained that for most minerals, the existing mines in the country have sufficient reserves to supply industry and thus it would be preferable from community rights and environmental standpoint to expand existing mines rather than open new mines.

“However, the government seems focused on giving away large tracts for new extraction projects at exactly the worst time to be selling wealth. Even with the existing mines, there are many violations of community rights and environmental laws. For example, all mines in Goa were found to be violating one or more law. Why is it that the Indian mining industry is simply unwilling to follow the law? It would be better for the government to first do an intensive study of all existing mines to see if they are following the law, especially in connection with community rights and the environment,” argued Basu.

He further remarked that in cases where any violations are found, the local communities should be properly compensated, the environmental damage restored, the offending lessees blacklisted, and the leases auctioned off.

But what irks the communities is that the promised development due to mining rarely reaches them.

Sanjay Namdeo, who is the head of the Communist Party of India (CPI) in the Singrauli district, stressed mineral-rich Singrauli area, which is dominated by tribal people, was a land of abundant water, forests and agriculture but has now been ravaged due to human greed.

“The experience of extensive mining in this region over the past few decades has shown everything that is bad with the mining industry. Ideally, the communities should have full right over the water, forests and land as they nurture it over the years. But governments fail to do so. For example, in Singrauli, the government failed to ensure that people get the benefit. Instead, it is the industrialists who get all the benefits. Secondly, mining should have improved the lives of people involved or impacted by the mining sector including those whose livelihoods were based on the land where mining is taking place. But this never happened and instead, their lives have been completely destroyed. The mining profits should have been shared with the communities but that never happens,” Namdeo told Mongabay-India.

Minerals are a shared inheritance
Mining is an important sector in India’s economy and results in raw material for many other industries in the country. Right now, India now produces 95 minerals and is among the top producers of coal and iron ore globally. There are thousands of mining leases across the country. Over the past few months, the central government has been focusing on pushing the mining sector to boost the economy. For instance, it first allowed commercial coal mining to increase coal production and then, in August 2020, proposed reforms in the mining sector.

But the question is whether such reforms will be able to improve the lives of the communities involved.

Saswati Swetlena of the Mineral Inheritors Rights Association (MIRA), a network of civil society groups, said mineral resources are a shared inheritance and are best safeguarded by the local communities for the future generations.

“The local communities particularly, women, must be recognised as the custodians of all forms of natural resources and its governance as their fundamental right to ensure environmental justice. In the name of ease of business and public purpose, the state has been violating every legal provision meant to protect the rights of the communities. How does any mineral extraction make sense when it evicts and dispossesses millions from their life and livelihoods for the benefit of a few corporates? Is the state trust-worthy?” Swetlena questioned.

Rahul Basu of Goa Foundation said we need to ensure our children and future generations inherit at least as much as we did and we must ensure we capture the full value of our mineral wealth, save the entire proceeds for future generations, and distribute the income from the new investments equally to all as a citizens dividend, a right of ownership.

“At present, governments wrongly treat royalties as revenue, not a capital receipt, and merrily spend it, cheating our children and future generations of their rightful inheritance. There are a number of other inheritances that are depleted by mining, including the environment, the social fabric of the local community, the employment and incomes associated and the right to use the ore for useful things. Each of these inheritances is also subject to the inter-generational equity principle, and mining must be planned in such a way to ensure we avoid, restore or offset any damage to these inheritances, and if that is not possible, capture the full value and save it for future generations. This is only ethical, moral, fair, just and right,” Basu remarked.

Illegal mining: Need to call out names of fraudulent, wasteful ventures, reverse inhuman conditions

Counterview.org || March 7, 2019

The seventh general assembly of the mines, minerals and People (mm&P), held in Dabbanda, Visakhapatnam on March 1-3, 2019, saw participating human rights defenders, academics, journalists and students “pledge” for securing the rights of the indigenous communities for sustainable development, even as sharply focusing on illegal mining, women and children affected due to mining, poor implementation of the District Mineral Foundation Fund (DMF), silicosis, future Generation Fund and Business and human rights.

Attended by more than 260 participants from 100 organizations representing 21 states of India, it saw participation, among others, of eminent subject experts Roger Moody, Natalie Lowrey (coordinator, Deep Sea Mining Campaign and Yes to Life and No to Mining), Linda Chukchauk, BT Venkatesh (Reach Law), Rahul Basu (Goa Foundation).  Read more

States “violating” tribal rights in India’s mining areas: mm&P delegates tell MPs, PMO, NCST

A delegation led by mines, minerals and People (mm&P) chairman Ravi Rebbapragada, who is executive director, Samata, and Ashok Shrimali, secretary-general mm&P, and consisting of  mm&P executive committee members from Rajasthan, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Goa, has raised mining-related issues before India’s top parliamentarians.

The issues raised included non-implementation and utilization of District Mineral Foundation (DMF) funds in all Indian states; recent hazard in the role hole mines in Meghalaya; false and fabricated cases against tribals across the country; Samata judgment and its implications in various states; illegal coal mining in Churulia, West Bengal; granting leases without the gram sabha consent as in the case of coal mining in Godda district by Adani group; and displacement due to Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor and bullet train project.
The delegation stressed on how the Goa government has approved its Goa Regional Plan 2021 without identifying the tribal areas, thereby ignoring the fact that the Goa has about 12% of the tribal population, noting, the state government has constituted an interim Tribes Advisory Council without giving any representation to the tribal community members, violating the Scheduled V of the Constitution of India. It added, the tribal sub-plan (TSP) funds are diverted in large scale in Goa and hence failed to meet its purpose to benefit the tribal population.
Pointing out that the tribals of Goa are kept in total darkness about the provisions of community forest rights (CFR), enshrined under Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, it said, false and fabricated cases are being registered against the tribals who are protesting for their rights.
The delegation handed over a memorandum on these issues to Mansukhbhai Vasava (MP, Gujarat), Prabhubhai Vasava (MP, Gujarat), Jitendra Chowdhary (MP, Tripura), D Raja (MP, Tamil Nadu), Sadhavi Savitri Bai Phule (MP, Uttar Pradesh), the Prime Minister Office, and the vice chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST).
Courtesy: Counterview

Mining firms stop school buses, 70 kids stuck at home

PANAJI: Around 70 children in Sonshi, and several others in the state’s mining belt, are unable to go to school as mining companies, after their operations came to a standstill following the Supreme Court order, stopped providing them transport.

It is the state government’s responsibility in these circumstances to immediately provide free transport to these schoolchildren as also water to these areas, Ashok Shrimali of the voluntary organisation mines, minerals and people said. Read more

TimesView Mining areas like Sonshi have always faced the brunt of government neglect, first when they were being smothered in pollution and now when their children have been deprived school bus service and are forced to stay home. The government provides buses to aided schools under the Bal Rath scheme, why does it not extend the scheme to government schools as economically underprivileged children are more likely to go to these schools.
“We held a daylong workshop today with mining affected people from across Goa and the main issues affecting them presently is no transport for their children to go to school and lack of water. Mining companies have stopped providing both as their operations have shut. They say they are now contributing towards the district mineral foundation (DMF) instead,” Ravindra Velip of mines, minerals and people said.

Velip said it is shameful that children are unable to go to school because of lack of transport. “It is the primary responsibility of the state government to provide these basic requirement and they should do so immediately. The state cannot wash its hands off the responsibility,” he added.

Shrimali said that the state government also urgently needs to carry out a study on the groundwater situation in the mining belt.

“Goa has a DMF of about Rs 186 crore, of which Rs 10 crore have been utilised so far. When we checked the ground reality, we were informed that due to mismanagement the Rs 10 crore which was spent has failed to benefit the affected community,” said Shirmali.

Courtesy: The Times of India

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