Judgment of the Supreme Court in the matter of In Re: Zudpi Jungle Lands. A batch of applications involved a peculiar issue concerning the situation prevailing in the six districts of eastern Vidarbha region namely Nagpur, Wardha, Bhandara, Gondia, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli. The issue pertains to the status of the …
WHILE Indians hotly debate whether common folk can be entrusted with the management and control of their forest resources, local communities in several other developing countries are already entrenched in their idyllic fortresses. The results have been, to say the least, positive, even dramatic. In Nepal, village communities have been …
FOR environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in India, the recent draft Forest Policy Bill is a depressing indication of their inability to affect policymaking even after years of hoarse activism. More than 10 years after the NGOs exhausted themselves trying to stop the implementation of a similar anti-people forest bill, the …
OVER the past decade, "social forestry" has become a catchword among the policymakers, environmentalists and development professionals. However, it has not made much headway in becoming a people's programme and continues to be a government initiative. It is now recognised that apart from being an afforestation venture, it involves a …
PEOPLE's efforts to protect forests in the villages of Gujarat are recent compared to those in the Bihar-Orissa belt and started only after the forest cover had become non-existent. Villages had become surrounded by dry, barren ground. The trees had been reduced to mere root-stock. With an uncorporative forest department …
IN THE summer of 1970, Nunaram Mardi of Bhitardhari village in Bihar"s East Singhbhum district espied a lone female monkey on a treeless rockface, desperately trying to shield her baby from the harsh sun with her body. "She was searching for shade, but could not find any," Mardi recounts. "On …
BEHIND Commanding Officer Lt Col C P Singh Deo at the headquarters of the 127 Infantry Battalion in Dehradun, detailed maps and information sheets mark out the area in Mussoorie where his battalion operates. But the 127 Infantry Battalion (Eco) has nothing to do with war; the "boys", as Col …
The international conference, BioResources "94, held in Bangalore from October 3-7, aimed to forge a new strategy to use biomass resources for sustainable development. However, at the end of the conference -- organised by the International Energy Initiative, the Biomass Users Network, the Commonwealth Science Council, and the Stockholm Environment …
ON JULY 23, Delhi's development minister Sahib Singh Verma kicked off the state government's afforestation drive from Jaunapur village in Mehrauli block. However, indignant at being forced out of the area and suddenly losing their traditional rights over the land, the villagers tried to block the minister's path, leading to …
Largescale planting of trees in deserts for fodder and fuel wood have always come a cropper since a continuous supply of water is never assured. Now, scientists from the Jodhpur-based Central Arid Zone Research Institute (CAZRI) have invented a device called Jaltripti to surmount this problem. Jaltripti consists of a …
"THE Range-wallahs want to kill us and our cattle to plant trees for the townspeople. Let the people in the towns plant trees on their own land," rages Punia Bhima, a wizened Bhilala tribal of Pujara Ki Chowki village in the Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh. Bhima is a veteran …
SRI Lanka's forestry master plan is to be revived, reports Mallika Wanigasundara from Colombo. The plan, which was prepared between 1983 and 1986, with the help of the Finnish Development Agency and the World Bank, had to be shelved because of fierce opposition from environmentalists. One of the main objections …
ALARMED by unchecked deforestation, the Thailand government launching an ambitious, three-year reforestation project in May, with backing from the Thai royal family.
IN JANUARY, Doordarshan aired a documentary called The Green Brigade, which despite a typical Films Division tone, was informative, interesting and even balanced. It was on the Ecological Task Force (ETF) set up by the army to take up reforestation and ecological stabilisation in inhospitable regions. The ETF consists of …
CAN REGENERATING villages revive denuded hills? And, vice versa, can regenerating hills revive impoverished villages? Daulat Ram, the old man of Sukhomajri, a Gujjar hamlet near Chandigarh, once said, "Hills and human beings have the same power. If their energies are put together instead of being set against each other, …
A BARREN hillock in Agali village in Kerala's Palakkad district is now verdant with forests worth lakhs of rupees, as a result of natural farming -- farming without any external inputs -- by two school-teachers, Vijayalakshmi and Balakrishnan. They have made 8 ha of degraded land cultivable through mulching, water …
THE ORISSA government's ambitious plan to develop a beach resort complex over more than 900 ha between Puri and Konark has raised a storm of controversy in the state. While environmental activists allege that the project will cause irreversible damage to the ecologically fragile coastal stretch, officials of the state …
HISTORIANS, archaeologists and art-lovers all over the country are eagerly awaiting the day when the Archaeological Survey Of India (ASI) and the Orissa state works department take up renovation of the inside of the Sun Temple at Konark. It will be a historic moment as the renovation will mean reopening …
"I WAS A labourer, but now, because of the project, I am free. I cannot explain what this means to me," says Dadabhau Jadhav, a frail, small-built Thakkar Adivasi of Mothewadi village in the foothills of Maharashtra's Sahyadri range. For generations, the Thakkar Adivasis have worked as contract and even …
A PAKISTANI student has single-handedly started a plantation drive in Karachi. Imran Sultan has planted nearly 70 neem saplings in the past five months in the Karachi Administration Employees' Housing Society complex, and spending PRs 15,000 (Give Indian equivalent) on pits, earth, fertiliser and the wages of a part-time gardener, …
Even as the Uttar Pradesh government faces a barrage of criticism for its otherwise lacklustre performance, it has undertaken an impressive afforestation programme that state forest secretary Mohinder Singh says is aimed at reducing environmental pollution in urban settlements. During 1993-94, 400 million saplings will be planted in select towns …
