Category: Environment, Forest and Climate change

In Odisha’s Sundargarh district, villagers are on a ‘do-or-die’ agitation to check coal pollution

Scroll.in | May 19, 2021

Trucks from the Kulda opencast mine pass through 19 villages, swathing them with fine coal dust.

For over a decade, the villages near the Kulda opencast mine in Odisha’s Hemgiri block in the Sundargarh district have been fighting coal pollution without respite. In a desperate bid to highlight their unrelenting situation, the people of the area are now locked in a “do or die” agitation against the project since January.

In February, Rajendra Naik, a human rights defender from Ratanpur, one of the affected villages located 10 km from the Kulda mines, filed an application in the Odisha High Court, against the central and state government and the Mahanadi Coalfields Limited, a subsidiary of Coal India, which manages the mine. He submitted that the coal transport passing by Ratanpur and 25 villages along a 30 km stretch to Chhattisgarh violated the environmental clearance for the mine in 2002 and in 2018, which stipulated that the coal transported by road, shall be carried out by covered/conveyers with effective control measures.

The Odisha High Court in its order on March 17 directed the collector of Sundargarh district to hold a detailed enquiry involving local villagers and representatives of the government of Odisha and the centre. The collector, Nikhil Pavan Kalyan, held a meeting on March 23 following which he passed an order on March 24 restricting the plying of vehicles from 6 am to 1 pm except on public holidays.

His order called for covering the vehicles, increasing the water sprinkling in the villages for dust suppression, raising the school walls high to prevent dust. The district administration was asked to assess crop damage due to dust and impact on ponds in the area.

Since 2007-’08, the residents of Taparia, Ratanpur and other nearby villages in the Hemgir block of Sundargarh district have suffered incessant dust pollution from the daily 3,000 dumper trucks of coal which pass through their villages.

On January 19, they launched an agitation that is still going on, even though the authorities have tried to suppress it in many ways. Despite the collector’s order in March, the restriction on trucks plying is already being violated, according to local residents. Earlier court directives to control coal pollution have failed due to administrative apathy.

The villagers affected by pollution had opposed the expansion of the mine’s capacity, citing non -compliance with an earlier environmental clearance for a year in 2018, which increased the mine’s capacity from 10 million tonnes per annum to 14 million tonnes per annum. There were many conditions attached to this clearance that included regular medical camps, controlling fugitive emissions along the road with mechanised sweeping and spraying and creating a thick green belt in the downwind direction of the project site.

Despite the residents’ opposition, in January, an expert appraisal committee of the Indian government’s environment ministry recommended the expansion of Kulda mine’s capacity from 14 million tonnes per annum to 19.6 million tonnes per annum.

A news report in January mentioned “the economic blockade at Taparia village by locals who disrupted the movement of coal-laden trucks on Bankibahal-Taparia road”. It said that initially, the protestors were demanding repair of the damaged road but now are adamant about stopping the transportation of coal through their village.

Coal dust pollution
Far from it being an issue of road repair or merely transportation or even an economic blockade, it is a critical issue of coal pollution which the scheduled tribe and scheduled caste communities which live in these villages near the Kulda and Basundhara mines have suffered for over a decade. The coal is transported to various places in Chhattisgarh and the 25 km road stretch between Bankibahal and Tiparia on the Odisha-Chhattisgarh border has dwindled to an unmotorable mess of potholes and stones.

Every day the trucks from the opencast mine at Kulda pass through 19 villages, and swathe the villages with fine coast dust which affects thousands of people, said Naresh Meher, one of the protestors. The road, which is the main bone of contention, is not the only thing at stake for the communities. The intense coal pollution disrupts every single minute of their lives.

It is after a decade-long struggle against pollution and exploring legal avenues that the affected villages embarked on a “do or die” agitation as one of the protestors, Naresh Meher told Mongabay-India. He is among those jailed and harassed for the protests.

Odisha has the second-largest coal reserves (24%) in the country with stocks of almost 80 billion tonnes. On April 2, at the Mahanadi Coalfields Limited annual press conference, PK Sinha, who is the Chairman-cum-Managing Director, said that coal production and despatch of the Mahanadi Coalfields Limited during the financial year 2020-’21 was the highest ever at 148.01 million tonnes and 146 million tonnes respectively.

Earlier in October 2020, it had bagged five Coal India awards, including two corporate awards for Corporate Social Responsibility and Quality and also the first prize for the CSR implementation in Coal India.

Despite these sterling qualities, the company has clearly fallen short of controlling coal pollution. A site inspection and monitoring report of 2019, by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change shows that concentrations of particulate matters PM10 and PM2.5 are above permissible limits in the area and it was suggested that more sprinkling and control measures needed to be carried out. Also, the company was not monitoring fugitive dust emissions from the mining operations, among several shortcomings.

Moreover, the promised green belt is also nowhere to be found and there is no proper health assessment on the impact of coal pollution, said Meher, from the Janshakti Vikas Sanghatana, a coalition of affected communities from 25 villages in the area. He alleged that the health situation has worsened over the years. He suffered from tuberculosis as do other people in Ratanpur village and two of his uncles passed away due to cancer. His younger brother died after he contracted tuberculosis and then cancer.

Finally, unable to take it any longer, the community formed a group this year mainly to deal with the long pending issues of pollution, livelihoods and health.

Meher said that his father owned seven acres in Ratanpur, which was acquired for the mines, about ten km away. “We have lost land in the mine but there are no jobs for us,” he pointed out. “In Ratanpur village alone, there were some 19 acres of cultivated land which was acquired for mining.”

This area had a dense forest with panthers but since a few years, there has been no sighting, said Sarita Barpanda, a lawyer with the Human Right Law Network who is helping Meher and others in the local region with their legal cases.

Impact on agriculture
The pollution is not only impacting the health of the people but is also affecting the livelihoods of the people. The dust from coal has adverse impacts on the cultivation of paddy and kendu (or tendu leaves used for rolling tobacco in beedis) leaves.

Often they are discoloured and do not fetch good prices in the market, Meher said. But this is not all, as there is an additional problem of slag being dumped on the roads from a sponge iron factory, one km away from Ratanpur, in the name of road repairs. The scheduled castes and tribes in the area do not own much land and they cultivated the nearby forests. Meher said their claims for titles for the forest land under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, have been unsuccessful.

“We have scaled back the level due to Covid-19 but the agitation continues,” Meher said. “Many of us were detained and some including me went to jail. When we started our protest in January in Taparia village, false cases were filed against us and 16 persons were jailed. Then the police enforced prohibitory orders, so we moved to another village – Kandadhoha – to protest.”

There, he alleged that the local transporters and members of a coal mafia, operating in the region, filed cases of attempted murder and dacoity against the protestors following which the police arrested 12 men and 12 women.

After that, the protest soon moved to Ratanpur where they voiced their concerns about poor roads and pollution. On 23 March, the district collector arrived with many police personnel.

Barpanda said: “We spoke to the tehsildar but he supported the Mahanadi Coalfields Limited while saying the company will suffer losses if they do not run the trucks,” she said. “He had no sympathy for the villagers.”

Though the protesters are all geared up to take their latest protest to a meaningful conclusion this is not the first time they have voiced their concerns. The community had filed cases in court to divert the trucks away from their place of habitation but even then, Meher said, the timings were not being adhered to and nothing changed except the police repression.

In 2016, an order by the Odisha High Court had said that the road should be repaired and till then, no vehicle should ply on it. It had reviewed the road from Bankbihal to Taparia and said that two-ton multi-axle vehicles should be stopped till it was repaired.

Prior to that, in 2015, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the Odisha government and the Mahanadi Coalfields Limited for the construction of a four-lane coal corridor from Bankibahal to Bhedabahal (in Sundargarh district where an ultra-mega power plant is proposed), as the existing road is not fit for multi-axle heavy vehicles.

Since that was not done, the heads of 26 gram panchayats filed a writ petition in the Odisha High Court in 2016. On that, the court ordered the formation of a committee that inspected the road from Sundergarh to Bankibahal/Taparia and submitted its report in March 2017.

The report ordered stopping the movement of trucks from Bankibahal to Taparia till the road was widened and repaired. The court ruled that a coal corridor must be built within a period of two months of the order and must be completed by the end of 2018 “on a war footing basis”.

It had also asked the collector to restrict the movements of vehicles and said that one of the conditions should be that multi-axle vehicles would only ply from 11 pm to 6 am. But none of this happened and orders to restrict truck movement has been wilfully disobeyed.

A Mahanadi Coalfields Limited spokesperson said that there is no alternative to this road and it was being repaired by Jindal Power. He claimed that the timings regarding the movement of trucks are being adhered to and the Mahanadi Coalfields Limited was cleaning the ponds and spraying water to control coal dust. He said there was some proposal for a coal corridor but did not have any details.

The spokesperson said the problem the people are facing should be resolved in a few months. Mahanadi Coalfields Limited was also dealing with the pollution, and while there will be some pollution due to coal dust, the company was doing all it can to improve the matter, he said while stressing that the Mahanadi Coalfields Limited holds health camps for the people as well.

Two firms bid for additional works of Polavaram Irrigation Project

The New Indian Express | May 19, 2021

The technical evaluation of the bids will be done on Wednesday, followed by commercial/financial evaluation on Wednesday before going for reverse tendering, the officials said.

VIJAYAWADA: Two firms have filed bids for the additional head works of Polavaram Irrigation Project (PIP) in the second call given by the water resources government earlier this month.

The technical evaluation of the bids will be done on Wednesday, followed by commercial/financial evaluation on Wednesday before going for reverse tendering, the officials said.

According to information, Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd (MEIL), which is already executing the head works, is one of the two companies that filed the bids for the additional works.

“Two companies have submitted the bids before the deadline on Tuesday and we will evaluate them on Wednesday. The qualified bids will be considered for financial evaluation, followed by reverse auctioning, with qualified bidders, on Friday,” a senior official from the water resources department said. The estimated value of the works is Rs 683 crore.

For the record, the water resources department had invited tenders last month for the additional works, but later decided to re-invite the bids as the bids filed by two companies that participated in the process had issues. Subsequently, a second call was given and time was given till Tuesday to file the bids.

It is learnt that the department wanted to award works to the existing contractor on nomination basis to ensure momentum in the pace of works as change in an agency would again involve logistic management.

​However, the department sent the bids for judicial preview and floated the tender after the government decided to go for bidding.

The additional head works include investigation, survey, preparation of designs and construction of RCC diaphragm wall end cut-off for spill channel, vibro stone columns and others.

Reverse tendering

The technical evaluation of the bids will be done on Wednesday, followed by commercial evaluation on Wednesday before going for reverse tendering.

Without Addressing Legacy Issues, Can Digitising Land Records in India Be a Game Changer?

The Wire | May 18, 2021

For millions of rural families who still lack access to good internet connectivity or are computer illiterate, the programme may end up increasing out-of-pocket expenses.

As part of the Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP), the central government intends to create an Aadhaar-like unique identification for every land parcel in the country. The initiative named Unique Land Parcel Identification Number (ULPIN) will assign a geo-referenced 14-digit alphanumeric unique ID for each land parcel surveyed in the country. ULPIN has already been launched in 11 states, and the Centre intends to do a countrywide rollout by March 2022.

This is a welcome addition to the previous digitisation steps taken up by DILRMP like establishing data centres at all administrative levels, computerisation of registration and record of rights, digitisation of cadastral maps among many others. ULPIN is expected to further contribute towards the larger goal of creating an Integrated Land Information Management System (ILIMS) that is intended to improve real-time information on land resources, develop land banks, optimise land use and assist in policy and planning.

The opportunity in digitising land records…

The current paper-heavy physical management of land records is inefficient and replete with red tape which in turn creates a fertile ground for corruption by land mafias, especially in rural areas. The common man has little say in this and is at the mercy of revenue officials. So it follows that India must upgrade to a modern and efficient land records management system that works for both the administration and common people.

Land records digitisation which started in 2008 has ushered tangible benefits in many states. For example, Jharkhand now has a dedicated web portal called ‘jharbhoomi’ where any land owner in the state can see the status of their land tax, pay the due amount online, register land and homes, or apply for online land mutation.

ULPIN can further enhance similar single window citizen services delivery and can potentially prevent land fraud and bring in much needed transparency, especially in rural areas where many land records are outdated, missing or disputed. ULPIN will most certainly guarantee uniqueness in all transactions, especially if blockchain technology is utilised. It would also be a massive step in enabling seamless interoperability across government departments, financial institutions and even revenue courts.

For rural landowners, accessing loans and land-based government schemes might become easier and people living in the disaster-prone areas might not have to worry about losing their land documents to floods and fire anymore as their land ownership will be digitally secured and accessible. If not anything, ULPIN will at least provide a better picture of land ownership in India and help identify illegally held lands by bad actors. The ULPIN digitisation, therefore, seems like a good initiative, at least in principle.

…comes with certain caveats

India might be a growing IT hub but the digital divide is still a huge concern in this country – a sad reality that was revealed in the pandemic when students from far flung areas struggled to attend online classes for want of the internet, laptops or smartphones. For the millions of rural families who still lack access to good internet connectivity or are computer illiterate, the online facilities by virtue of ULPIN will be of little use. In fact, this may end up increasing their reliance on ‘internet middlemen’ and increase their out of pocket expenses.

The Centre has said that linking Aadhaar number with ULPIN will be based on consent but it is safe to assume that sooner or later the linkage will become mandatory. Moreover, nobody wants to be left out. The perception of missing out on future “imaginary” benefits due to the said linkage itself will drive people to opt for the same.

Individuals still face issues with Aadhaar in terms of mismatched IDs and biometric verification which in many cases deprive rural beneficiaries of their rightful access to government schemes. Linking Aadhaar with ULPIN can potentially create conditions of further alienation of the marginalised sections of the society.

One of the significant repercussions of the ULPIN initiative will be in the forest sector where it is can potentially undermine the Forest Rights Act (FRA). The landmark Act provides individual and community forest rights (IFR and CFR) over forest lands that the local communities have been using traditionally for centuries.

According to a 2019 TISS report, a decade after the FRA implementation, only 14.67% of the potential forest area have been recognised across the country. So, what does ULPIN mean for the hundreds of thousands of India’s forest dwelling citizens whose rightful claims to forest land remain unsettled.

Additionally, what happens to the resources of villages which are government property on record but have been claimed by gram sabhas as part of their FRA rights. In the absence of any formal land-holding titles, these customary lands might be at risk of being added to the land banks and made available for developmental activities, industrial establishments or CAMPA (Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority) plantations.

In states like Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha, these CFR (commercial forest reserve) lands are already under immense pressure for raising such plantations by the forest department. There have been cases where CFR rights are intentionally delayed or rejected to accommodate for such plantations (often monocultures).

Then there are millions of hectares of land in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh called ‘orange areas’ which erroneously show up in both revenue and forest department land records. This bureaucratic mismanagement has caused disputes over 3.8 million hectares of land causing an estimated 1.5 million poor farmers to live in perennial insecurity. This issue has not been solved in the last 50 years, and it doesn’t look like a digital intervention like ULPIN can be of any aid. Instead, a rushed implementation can further complicate this complex issue and raise land legacy tensions.

As with any top down heavy initiative, ULPIN too risks doing too much in too little time overlooking the immense complexity of issues related to land ownership in India. As government officials from tehsils and blocks rush toward completion of their respective targets within a stipulated time, will they consult all the stakeholders, settle long-pending land rights, resurvey disputed lands and change land plot numbers before assigning a unique digital identification?

A similar digital experiment with land has already been carried out by a few nations in South America. An extensive report by GRAIN shows how the land digitalisation process in five South American countries is paving the way towards mass privatisation and financing of land, disregarding the socio-ecological function of such community and public lands through a process that is termed as ‘digital land grabbing’. The report warns about reducing such common lands to mere financial instruments that has facilitated land grabs on massive scales, often at the expense of peasant and indigenous territories.

The fact that the ULPIN initiative shares similar tools (geo-referencing, digitised cadastral maps, private titling, land market, bank integration) as used in the South American nations raises some immediate red flags. Although this development is taking place in a far-off continent, it still provides valuable learnings for India, especially on the importance of safeguarding community and public lands. Any attempt to bulldoze the initiative across all states without making robust provisions for collective titling of common lands may lead to severe land legacy disputes in future.

Digitisation of land records and its unique identification can certainly lead to efficient management in land administration in India. However, just like any other technology, what matters is how the technology is wielded in the shadow of underlying interests of the political economy of India. In a country where vast amounts of land records are outdated, disputed or unaccounted, ULPIN will hardly be able to be the game changer that it is billed to be, unless the pending rights are settled and land records are updated post resurveys.

Otherwise, it simply ends up in a costly exercise in validating historic land dispossessions and existing illegal encroachments by the rich and powerful. So, in a way the initiative provides a timely reminder and massive opportunity to first create an enabling environment, rectify old injustices and update existing land records before going ahead with the proposed digitisation.

This will need time and patience and so, instead of a hurried campaign to cover the entire geography of India in a few years and earn some political points, ULPIN, for now, should be limited to only those land parcels where rights and legal statuses are well-settled.

Why India’s Forest Rights Act Is the Most Viable Forest Conservation Law

science.wire.in | May 11, 2021

The Union environment ministry called for expressions of interest from consultancies on April 8, 2021, to prepare a draft comprehensive amendment to the Indian Forest Act 1927. Will fortress conservation make a legal comeback? And will Parliament collaborate in this disaster?

For too long forest conservation has been plagued by ‘fortress conservation‘. Based on the myth that humans can be separated from the natural world, forest enclaves are created, enclosed and policed by guards, gatekeepers and administrators. Increasingly militarised, these are fast emerging as killing fields. Forests, wildlife and forest dwellers faced the brunt of this ill-conceived pernicious conservation approach. India’s Forest Rights Act 2006 (FRA) is perhaps the first law in the world to outright discard state-led fortress conservation, adopting conservation-based community forest governance instead. Conservation science affirms rights-based conservation as the future of conservation.

Fortress conservation is traced to the establishment of Yosemite National Park in 1864 for ‘public use, resort and recreation’. It was carved out of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains by waging a war against its indigenous people, the Ah-wah-ne-chee, and forcing them out. The first Protected Area (PA) in the world, the Yellowstone National Park, was set up in 1872, a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. The first legal conservation framework is the US Wilderness Act of 1964 which recognised the value of preserving “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” The fact however is that there is hardly any part of Earth that is truly pristine and wild where human beings have not set foot and manipulated to meet their needs.

Protected areas

Of the 510.07 million sq. km surface area of the earth, 70.8% is ocean and the rest land. Currently [15.4% (20,749,121 sq km) of land and 7.6% (27,718,127 sq km) of oceans are under the PA regime through 257,889 designated PAs as on February 2021. About 363 million people inhabit these PAs. Tragically, 10.8 to 173 million people are estimated to have been displaced to make way for these PAs. Mark Dowie, the renowned investigative historian, says that “the only thing that has displaced more people around the world than war is wildlife conservation.” And 1.65 billion to 1.87 billion people live in important biodiversity conservation areas.

According to the UN, 75% land surface has been altered and 66% ocean impacted. Some governments, powerful global conservation agencies and scientists argue that 30% of Earth should be under formal ‘protection and conservation’ by 2030 increasing to 50% by 2050.

Globally, forests cover 31% land area of 40.6 million sq. km accessed by about 1.5 billion people of whom 60 million are indigenous peoples or tribals. Three-fourths of these forests are government owned. About half the forest area is relatively intact. About 4.2 million sq. km of forest have been lost through conversion to other land uses since 1990. Between 2015 and 2020, deforestation was 0.1 million sq. km per year down from 0.16 million sq km in the 1990s. 18% of the world’s forest area or more than 7 million sq km fall within legally established PAs.

Tryst with fortress conservation

India, with 2.4% of the world’s land area, accounts for 7-8% of all recorded species. Forests, simply lands notified as forests by law, increased steadily from 18.19% of the land area in 1949-50 to 23.34% (767,400 sq km) in 2019. This is 1.78% of total global forests. The government aims to convert 33% of land into forests.

The Indian Forest Act 1927 provides for declaration of Reserved Forest (all rights are banned unless granted), Protected Forest (rights permitted unless banned) and Village Forest (Reserved Forest assigned to villages), and regulates transit of forest produces and prescribes duty leviable on them. It defines what constitutes forest offences, prohibited acts and prescribes penalties for their violation.

There are 4,526 forest villages (inside the forests) and many more that are undemarcated or unsurveyed. 100 million to as much as 400 million people access these forests. About Rs 20,000 crore per year is earned from non-timber forest products and absorbs 50% of the employment in forestry sector. The State of Forest Report 2019 tells us that 13 out of 28 States have 33% or more land area as forest lands. These include all the eight states in the northeast (Goa, Kerala, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha being the other states) where about half of the land is forested. Over 55% of these forests are not notified as forests, nor administered by the Forest Department. Local communities govern them. They are categorised as unclassed forests. Of the top 5 States with forests, 4 are tribal majority states. The forest area in the north-east has, more or less, remained the same and dense forests have generally increased in most of these states. There are more forests in tribal dominated regions where forest department is not there or are present minimally. That’s at least 110 out of 640 districts in the country. This stark reality should have been built upon assiduously as the basis for our approach to conservation. But it wasn’t.

Fortifying the fortresses

Some 171,921 sq km (5.03% of the total land area or 24.27% of the forests) are under the PA regime of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972. It carves out National Parks with no rights, Wildlife Sanctuaries with restricted rights, Conservation Reserves in uninhabited government land but accessed by people and Community Reserves which include private land. The Act prohibits hunting of endangered species, lays down restrictions on hunting many animal species and list out offences that attract penalties as though conservation is merely a law and order issue. Yes. this conferred immense power to the forest bureaucracy to do what they will.

Currently this PA regime consists of 104 national parks covering 43,716 sq km (25.43% of PAs), 566 wildlife sanctuaries covering 122,420 sq km (71.21% of PAs), 97 Conservation reserves covering 4,483 sq km and 214 Community reserves covering 1,392 sq km. Marine PAs consisting of 10 National Parks, 115 Wildlife Sanctuaries, 4 Conservation Reserves and 1 Community Reserve cover 8,716.98 sq km. Of them, 6 National Parks, 95 Wildlife Sanctuaries and 4 conservation reserves covering 1,864.84 sq are in the island region and the rest in the Peninsular India. In addition, Tiger Reserves, an administrative category until 2006, were carved out of these National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries consisting of critical tiger habitat (CTH) or core area and buffer area. Provision was made to relocate the inhabitants from CTHs under Project Tiger which is still in operation, with a Rs.10 lakh relocation package which has been increased to Rs 15 lakh in April this year. There is no clear data available on number of people displaced from these PAs. However, 1 to 6 lakh people are estimated to have been displaced. Officially as on 12 July 2019, there were 57,386 families in 50 tiger reserves of which 18,493 families (33.23%) in 215 villages have been relocated from the CTH or core area. There are still 41,086 people in 496 villages. That these have been carried out in gross violation of the laws is another matter.

The forests and its PAs, including the much hyped Tiger Reserves, are denotified and diverted for all kinds of non-forestry projects including highly polluting extractive industries, and now for huge tree plantations to replace forests. Ironically, the State and Central governments are required to do all these under the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980 overseen by the Supreme Court constituted Central Empowered Committee. These too are fortresses of a different kind: no entry for forests, wildlife and forest dwellers. The lives of millions of forest dwellers do not figure any way in these blueprints for nation’s glory.

Since 1947, over 6.2 million ha have been diverted for non-forestry purposes. The government charges Rs 4 lakh to Rs 10.43 lakh per ha of forest land diverted as Net Present Value (set in 2008) which was recommended to be revised to Rs 5.65 lakh to Rs 55.55 lakh per ha in 2014 but not revised. The government earned Rs 74,825 crore from the user agencies, of which Rs 65,378 crore was disbursed to states by 2019 as a compensatory afforestation fund.

Fortress breached

The first breach in fortress conservation occurred when the Wildlife (Protection) Act itself was amended in 2006 making Tiger Reserves, the most zealously guarded part of the PA, a statutory category, until then only an administrative category. Such an amendment was deemed urgent to stem the tide of vanishing tigers. This was when the draft Forest Rights Bill was being debated heatedly. The critical wildlife habitat (CWH) provision in the Bill was grafted almost completely into this amendment as CTH. These are scientifically identified community confirmed areas facing irreversible damage due to the presence and activities of forest dwellers that threaten the existence of tigers. Community rights are to be recognised, livelihood affirmed, coexistence with wildlife promoted and, if not possible, only then secure livelihood based relocation and resettlement on mutually agreed terms with gram sabha consent. CTHs are to be kept ‘inviolate’, meaning not violated or harmed. The buffer area is to be identified scientifically with the gram sabha consent. Human-wildlife coexistence is to be promoted, livelihood, developmental, social and cultural rights of the local people recognised.

50 Tiger Reserves have been carved out of these National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries covering 71,027.10 sq km. Of this, 40,340.12 sq km is CTHs or Core Area and 30,686.98 sq km is the Buffer Area.

The second and final breach, the enactment of FRA, swept aside fortress conservation outright. Enacted four months later, and operationalising in 2008, FRA applied to ‘land of any description falling within any forest area’. It includes unclassed forests, undemarcated forests, existing or deemed forests, protected forests, Sanctuaries, National Parks and Tiger Reserves including ‘wastelands’. FRA recognised all conceivable traditional rights, whether listed in the law or not, except hunting. The demarcation of forest areas on the basis of rights, from no rights to graded rights have all been swept away. Conservation agenda was made central, all pervasive and expansive covering all forests and beyond. Forest governance was entrusted to all habitations that have any rights to the forests, literally lakhs of habitations with millions of people.

So what has changed?

The first big blow was when the Environment Ministry had to issue an order in 2009 making FRA implementation and gram sabha consent for diversion preconditions for admissibility of the forest diversion proposals. The Rules to the Forest (Conservation) Act were subsequently amended in 2014 and 2016 substituting these with District Collector’s certificate instead, certifying that these have been done, and that too only after in-principle first stage clearance by the Environment Ministry. The tribal ministry meekly protested that this would make the diversion a fait accompli. Making a mockery of forest laws is nothing new for the government to facilitate ‘ease of doing business’.

CWHs under FRA, once notified, cannot be diverted for any non-forest purposes unlike CTHs under the Wildlife (Protection) Act. This was the second big blow to the Environment Ministry. No wonder, the Environment Ministry issued guidelines for CWH notification, under pressure from the Court, only in 2018. No CWH has been notified yet.

The purveyors of fortress conservation are fighting back against the loss of their hegemonic power to do what they want with forests, wildlife and forest dwellers. Since 2009 till 2019, 253,179 ha were diverted for non-forestry purposes while another 182,817 ha degraded forests were diverted for tree plantations to compensate the former diversion, ironically branded ‘Compensatory Afforestation’.

There are 170,379 villages, each having one or more hamlets that have forest lands as land use which are officially recorded. The Environment Ministry reckons that at least 40 million ha of forests (56% of the total forests) accessed by these forest dwellers need to be transferred to village institutions from the forest bureaucracy. By the end of 2020, only a fraction of this has been recognised and titled: 5.3 million ha, just 13.18% of the potential area and 6.9% of forests. The forest bureaucracy aggressively resists FRA implementation, especially in PAs. The constitutional validity of FRA itself is now under litigation in the Supreme Court by the proponents of fortress conservation.

Jurisdiction of gram sabhas

The third big blow, the biggest of them all, was that FRA designated the gram sabhas as the governing authority of the forests. They are to demarcate their community forest resource area (Sec.3(1)(i) of FRA): “forest land within the traditional or customary boundaries of the village or seasonal use of landscape in the case of pastoral communities”, and protect, regenerate, conserve, manage and regulate access (Sec.5(d) of FRA). This area includes the forest lands claimed under individual rights of its members which are inalienable, non-transferable but inheritable, areas claimed for community rights of any kind irrespective of whether the area falls within any PA including the CWHs if and when notified by the Environment Ministry.

Further, the gram sabhas are to protect ‘adjoining catchment area, water resources and other ecologically sensitive areas’ (Sec.5(b) of FRA). They are also to preserve their habitat ‘from any form of destructive practices affecting their cultural and natural heritage (Sec.5(c) of FRA). These may fall outside their community forest resource area. The gram sabhas are now required to prevent any activity in these areas, and outside as well, that could harm these areas. The territorial jurisdiction of the gram sabhas with regard to conservation now covers vast forest areas. They overlap with adjacent gram sabhas creating an intricate ecological web of collective responsibility. Conservation, access and use of these forests demands cooperation amongst adjacent gram sabhas rather than competition or conflict through the fullest expression of democracy.

C.R. Bijoy examines natural resource conflicts and governance issues.

In Odisha, funds meant for mining-affected communities are being diverted to urban areas

Scroll | Manish Kumar | May 09, 2021
Those living in mining areas have been seeking assistance for basic amenities for decades.

During the latest budget Session of Odisha’s Legislative Assembly, the Odisha government’s Cabinet in March approved several proposals but the one that raised eyebrows was to use the District Mineral Foundation funds, meant for the mining-affected community in the Sundergarh district, for construction of an international stadium in Rourkela town.

The proposed international stadium has been envisioned to host the Men’s Hockey World Cup 2023. This misuse of the funds is not a one-off incident, but there have been many similar trends over the years. In 2017, in the Jharsuguda district, the district administration sanctioned works related to the power supply to the Jharsuguda airport with an investment of more than Rs 20 crore squeezed from the District Mineral Foundation funds.

In another mining district of Keonjhar, the district administration in 2019-’20 sanctioned works for a handball stadium, and invested around Rs 5,00,000 for a patient facilitation centre for Cuttack-based medical college which is around 200-km away from Keonjhar.

In January 2020, the administration of the Sundergarh district bought 25 cars with the District Mineral Foundation funds for them to be used as patrolling vans by the police in Rourkela city, a non-mining affected area. Earlier, even integrated traffic management was sponsored with the funds. In the same district, the funds were also used to construct the boundary walls of the Circuit House.

The list of instances where the funds were used for works that had nothing to do with the welfare of the mining-affected communities goes on. This, experts warn, is worrisome because this comes at a time when the state’s own people living in the mining-affected areas are crying for attention and seeking help for basic amenities in their areas after living in poor and vulnerable conditions for decades.

This is important because according to the Union Coal and Mines Minister Pralhad Joshi, Odisha has seen the highest collection of Rs 11,984 crore as District Mineral Foundation collections from the miners operating in the state since the inception of funds in 2015.

The Odisha government recently told the state Assembly that the District Mineral Foundation collections in the state are rising in the state. While it was Rs. 395.44 crore in 2015-2019, in 2019-’20 the total annual collections stood at Rs 3,079.20 crore.

Though Odisha has a significant amount of the funds what is probably lacking is the provision of transparency related to their use. For instance, Rule 16 of the Odisha DMF Rules talks about sharing the annual report of the District Mineral Foundation trust on its website but hardly any annual reports have been uploaded online for several years.

Odisha’s DMF Rules mandates the usage of 60% of the funds in priority areas while 40% of them could be used in non-priority areas. The non-priority areas included investments in physical infrastructure, irrigation, energy and watershed development, afforestation and others.

Queries sent to PK Jena, who is the Odisha government’s secretary for the planning and convergence department, regarding the diversion of DMF funds for other purposes remained unanswered.

Pranav Sachdeva, a lawyer with the Supreme Court who has handled many mining cases in the apex court emphasised that Odisha and many states have attempted to dilute the very concept of the funds by diverting it to areas other than the mining-affected areas.

“As mining firms grow, the local community impacted by mining does not get any benefit from the money collected … in fact the local environment is impacted too,” he said. “But the governments often diverts these important resources away from the vulnerable community. They try to use the funds for works where ideally budgetary allocations should have been used. These funds were planned for the upliftment of the affected community for their health, education, livelihood and others and many portions land in urban areas.”

Pollution mess
According to the 2011 Census, about 1.62 million people (50 percent) in the Sundergarh district belong to Scheduled Tribes and many live in rural areas. This area is adjacent to the Chhattisgarh border and known for coal mining and other minerals for decades. But what is consistently ignored is the plight of the communities impacted by mining.

For instance, Naresh Meher, a resident of Ratanpur village in Gopalpur panchayat in Sundergarh district, said that people in his village are living in pathetic conditions due to mining taking place about 10-km away. He said that the levels of air pollution, water pollution and sound pollution have taken a huge toll on his village.

“Around 3,000 trucks cross our village every day,” said Meher, who himself is a tuberculosis patient. “Thick levels of dust often engulf our standing crops while polluted water is discharged from the handpumps. Several of the citizens here live with skin diseases, cancer and other diseases triggered by mining activities.”

But this is not the end of their poor fate as his village is now listed to be taken away for mining.

Social activist Suru Mishra from Sundergarh said that in the Hemgiri block in the district, a stretch of 25 km of road connects the mining centres of Sundergarh with Chhattisgarh and passes through several villages but even then the roads are in extremely bad shape.

“You cannot walk on that road,” Mishra told Mongabay-India. “Only trucks and heavy vehicles run on that road. There are very big potholes and the whole stretch gets waterlogged making it very difficult for the local communities to commute or for kids to use that to go to schools.”

Both, Meher and Mishra, said that these areas and many other mining-affected areas need government attention to improve their standards of lives. They also said that the Hemgiri Community Health Centre is still deprived of a digital X-ray facility and ultrasound facility and other medical facilities but the government has spent several portions of the DMF funds in boosting the District Headquarter Hospital, which is in an urban area.

The provision of District Mineral Foundation funds – to be collected from miners – were introduced in January 2015 by the government of India through an amendment in the country’s mining laws for all districts affected by mining-related operations.

In the Talcher region of the Angul district, the villagers living in areas close to the coal mining and coal washery units are left to suffer from the discharge of untreated water directly into the farmlands of the village. Similarly, in the Bansapal and Joda blocks of the Keonjhar district, the villagers are facing the crisis of polluted groundwater, a result of mining activities. This has also forced many women to walk for miles every day to fetch drinking water.

Funds diverted
Experts working on the issue of mining in Odisha and other states claim that the funds are now easily diverted for other priority areas and urban areas despite it being illegal and mining-affected communities crying for help.

Sankar Prasad Pani, a lawyer with the National Green Tribunal said, “In districts like Keonjhar, the salaries of doctors are now being paid through the funds which should ideally be coming from the state’s budgetary allocations.”

“Collectors find the funds sometimes hard to dispense and thus divert it for numerous urban-centric works,” he said. “But they are not annual budget funds, they can be accumulated and do not lapse. They can be used when needed. The need is to make priority-based plans to aid the mining-affected people.”

Ramesh Agarwal, a leading Indian environmentalist based in Raigarh in Chhattisgarh said, “The rules of funds have been framed in such a way that the district collector gets the power to sanction the funds with the approval of the local District Mineral Foundation committee. In many states, we have seen diversion of the funds to other areas which is not going to affect the mining hit communities.”

A study conducted by the New Delhi-based think tank Centre for Science and Environment on the usage of the District Mineral Foundation funds in different mining districts of Odisha found that despite lower social and health indicators the allocation of the funds on the issue of livelihood and other areas had not been much, say for example in Sundergarh district.

“In Sundergarh, one of Odisha’s top mining districts, a negligible Rs 3 crore has been provided for child development out of the district’s Rs 745 crore sanctions. This is at a time when the under-five mortality rate in rural areas of the district is as high as 67, and nearly 50% of the children below this age are victims of stunted growth,” the report said.

Srestha Banerjee, Programme Head, International Forum for Environment, Sustainability & Technology, who played a key role in producing the Centre for Science and Environment report, said the constitution of the District Mineral Foundation committee in the districts is one of the main problems.

“The District Mineral Foundation Committee in the districts have been formed in such a way that the local politicians including the parliamentarians and legislators exert more power in the decision making on the spending of the funds in their areas,” Banerjee told Mongabay-India. “The mining laws permit the administration to use part of the funds for administration works, but when the mining hit communities need attention for their upliftment and diversion of these funds to urban areas and for other similar works sounds less logical.”

She said that livelihood and income generation of the rural poor population living in the mining-affected areas need to get a priority under the District Mineral Foundation fund allocations. She also demanded that the funds should be spent based on priority areas rather than in a haphazard manner as it is happening presently in many mining districts of Odisha.

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