Perspectives
Empowering Gramsabhasto Manage Biodiversity:The Science Agenda
Traditional biodiversity management models have followed a “control and command” approach and need to be replaced by a transparent and inclusive “inform and share” approach. The recently passed Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Rights to the Forest) Act 2006 offers a welcome opportunity to put in place such transparent and participatory
biodiversity management models.
MADHAV GADGIL
T
Traditional and Modern Practices
It must be noted that there have been no major scientific breakthroughs in applied ecology equivalent to the discovery of the role of microbes in causing diseases, or technological advances such as the discovery of antibiotics in medicine [Slobodkin 1988]. As a consequence, the modern scientific biodiversity management practices closely parallel traditional ones [Gadgil and Berkes 1991]. (i) For instance, just like quantitative restrictions on the amount of fuelwood extracted from a community woodlot, there are quantitative prescriptions as to the amount of timber to be removed through selection felling from a forest block. (ii) Like Torres Strait islanders stop fishing a particular species when its population density falls below a certain level, the Whaling Commission has banned hunting of certain species of whales whose populations have been severely depleted. (iii) As certain coastal fishing areas are fallowed by traditional societies when yields become low, similarly there have been prescriptions to “rest” certain forest areas, for instance, after the excessive harvests of the second world war. (iv) Just as there is a traditional ban on hunting in certain seasons, there are closed seasons for mechanised fishing.
(v) As certain life history stages, like breeding birds at heronries, are traditionally given protection, similarly younger stock in a forest is supposed to be spared all extractive pressure. (vi) Like certain methods of harvest, e g, poisoning of streams, may be traditionally forbidden, there are regulations forbidding fishing with destructive gear. (vii) Just as certain habitat patches, for instance sacred groves, may be fully protected, there are prescriptions for full protection to national parks.
(viii) As certain species like monkeys are traditionally protected, complete protection is extended to endangered species such as Siberian crane.
Scientific prescriptions thus parallel “pre-scientific” prescriptions based on traditional ecological knowledge and simple rules of thumb showing little evidence of progress. Similarly, government enforcement in this regard represents little progress over earlier religion or social convention based enforcement.
Maximum Sustainable Yield
A major scientific attempt to progress beyond this stage of folk knowledge is the notion of maximum sustainable yield (MSY). Its operation in comparison with folk systems are summarised in the table.
However, MSY regimes have often led to over-harvest and resource collapse because of the weakness of the scientific knowledge base, coupled with economic forces resisting reductions in harvest levels [Ludwig, Hilborn and Walters 1993].
Weaknesses of ‘Scientific Forestry’
Official management follows certain systematic procedures like development of working plans. However, science is not merely a matter of systematic procedures. Rather, it is a system of continual open scrutiny of the procedures being employed towards any given set of objectives, such as the estimation of bamboo stocks and yields that can be sustained, and of the level of reliability of the results these procedures produce [Bernal 1939].
Table
| Management System | Practice | Knowledge | Belief |
| Folk | Reduce harvests if resource population has become very low | Populations at low levels may decline drastically under continued harvests | Humans must respect nature |
| Scientific | Exploitation at maximum sustainable yield level | Quantitative models of dynamics of harvested populations | Humans may exploit nature to the fullest |
Economic and Political Weekly June 2, 2007 Therefore, the main ingredients of the scientific enterprise are:
All these three ingredients have been missing in the management of forest, wildlife, and biodiversity resources of the country with no tradition of transparency, of sharing of the results, the methodology employed to arrive at them and the logic followed in the deductions. This is why we continually encounter problems such as the false claims of numbers of tigers in Sariska.
An important weakness of so-called scientific forestry is the lack or poor quality of its data base. For instance, a majority of the preservation plots set aside to collect data on girth increments of different tree species under different environmental conditions in the country are either poorly maintained or destroyed [Gupta 1981].
In the 1960s the forestry establishment decided to abandon the “cautious” approach of conservation forestry and become “aggressive”- clearfell and raise plantations, such as those of exotic tropical pine or eucalyptus species [Gadgil, Prasad and Ali 1983; FAO 1984; National Commission on Agriculture 1976]. Regrettably, there was no careful scientific research on which species would succeed and what productivities could be realised. The best of our natural forest was clearcut, on the supposition that the new plantations of eucalyptus would annually produce biomass of between 14 to 28 tonnes per hectare. A significant proportion of these plantations were a dismal failure, especially in the high rainfall tracts due to fungal diseases cutting down their productivity to just one to three tonnes per hectare [Prasad 1984]. Many steep slopes of the Western Ghats of Kerala were laid to waste as the magnificent old stands of evergreens gave way to miserable stands of sickly eucalyptus.
Similarly, an assessment of the bamboo resources of Karnataka on the basis of the data available from the State Forest Resources Survey, paper mills, and extensive field work showed that the stocks were overestimated by a factor of ten times [Gadgil and Prasad 1978; Prasad and Gadgil 1981]. Scientific management also calls for knowledge of the growth pattern to decide on a harvesting regime that will make the most of the growth potential. Karnataka forest department’s prescriptions on the number of bamboo culms to be extracted from a clump were flawed because of a failure to appreciate the exponential nature of the growth of a bamboo clump and consequent excessive harvests from smaller sized clumps [Kadambi 1949]. Furthermore, the practices involved cleaning of the thorny covering developing naturally at the base of a bamboo clump. This was supposed to promote better growth of new shoots. In fact, removal of the thorny covering rendered the young shoots readily accessible to grazing by a whole range of animals so that the recruitment of new culms to the clumps remained very poor and the bamboo stocks remained stagnant. In contrast, the local villagers were fully aware of this difficulty attendant on clump cleaning and left the thorny cover intact while harvesting bamboo for their own use.
The modern scientific method has been termed as the “hypothetico-deductive” method. Hence, a truly scientific enterprise would treat documents such as “working plans” as scientific documents to be made available for peer review by all interested parties, not as official secrets. The yields expected to be realised, and the stocks expected to be left behind after the harvests would be treated as hypotheses to be tested. If the yields do not materialise, or the stocks are not sustained, then a scientific enterprise would acknowledge that there are obvious errors of fact or logic, and attempt to look for and correct them. It would also try to bring on board all interested parties, technical experts, as well as other stakeholders from the civil society in the effort to understand any mistakes and correct them.
Instead, only occasional remarks on the efficacy of earlier working plans are made when new ones are prepared. To quote one such example: “In the Yekkambi-Sonda area the A coupes under Edie’s plan and replacement felling areas under Garland’s plan have resulted in total exploitation of all valuable species…Most of the overwood of valuable species had been removed under the so-called ‘uniform system’ over large stretches of reserve forest area in the false hope of inducing natural regeneration of teak and other valuable species. ... Garland’s replacement fellings under uniform system was a total failure as it failed to induce or establish natural regeneration of teak or other valuable species” [Wesley 1964]. Such observations are not shared widely and exposed to scrutiny as should routinely happen in any scientific exercise.
Space-time Scales
Ecosystems are highly differentiated in space and time, and need to be managed with great attention to finer details [Reid, Berkes, Wilbanks and Capistrano 2006]. Behaviour of such complex systems cannot be described adequately in terms of a small number of parameters. Since there are many particular manifestations of any given type of ecosystem, it is difficult to identify replications required by the scientific experimental approach [Shrader-Frechette and McCoy 1993]. Furthermore, any particular outcome may be arrived at in many different ways. Take as a specific example the fate of Amla, Phyllanthus emblica populations, on the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple (BRT) hills of Karnataka. A group of competent ecologists from Bangalore have investigated the causes of its poor regeneration, on the assumption that excessive collection of the fruit and the consequent low availability of seeds is responsible for its poor regeneration, but the poor regeneration may be due to poor germination of abundantly available seeds, or poor survival of young seedlings. It may also be due to too much or too little rain, or the effect of fire, or some disease of seedlings, or grazing by deer and so on.
Given the enormous number of such possibilities, historical information on the behaviour of the system constituting a series of natural experiments can be of much value. At the same time given the large number of variables it is difficult to put the scientific methodology of careful replication to effective use. In the case of P emblica regeneration, the ecologists laid out a careful plan of observations to assess the impact of harvest of different proportions of fruit produced on any given tree. The local tribal Soligas however, suggested that they were on the wrong track, and that it was the control of forest fires by the forest department that was responsible for the poor regeneration. The ecologists eventually concluded that Soligas were probably right (Murali personal comment).
Sequential Overexploitation
The track record of so-called scientific forest management suggests that it has been unable to sustain resources. An FAO
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study in Kerala showed that the working plans have been converting the steep hill slopes earlier set aside as parts of a protection circle, first into selection felling circle, and then as forest resources are exhausted because of a failure to sustain use, into a conversion circle earmarked for clearfelling [FAO 1984]. Prasad and Gadgil (1981) illustrate the process of non-sustainable use of pulpwood resources by paper mills along several dimensions. The contractors supplying bamboo rarely adhered to prescriptions. Instead of removing a fraction of culms from all clumps throughout a block, they removed all the culms from the clumps most accessible from the road. Next year a fresh road would be made further inside the block and all roadside clumps clearfelled, and so on in a sequence, reaching into less and less accessible terrain. Secondly, as the forest areas near the mill were depleted, supplies were drawn from further and further away. Thus WCPM paper mill in Karnataka first sourced neighbouring Andhra and then further afield Garhwal, Assam, and finally Nagaland. Thirdly, as the supplies of bamboo, the most suitable species for paper making dwindled, other harder and harder woods were tapped. Fourthly, the mills moved from reserve forest land, from which they acquired supplies subsidised by the state to the tune of Rs 1.50 per tonne of bamboo (when the market price was Rs 5,000 per tonne), to the use of bagasse from sugar cane, or to eucalyptus grown on farm lands.
Biodiversity Conservation
The track record of so-called scientific conservation of biodiversity is also flawed, replete with instances of unexpected consequences that often follow interventions in complex ecosystems. For well over a century, Keoladeo Ghana National Park, a man-made wetland famous for the breeding of thousands of egrets, storks, pelicans in the monsoon and the wintering of lakhs of ducks, geese and the Siberian crane, had sustained grazing by large herds of buffaloes from neighbouring villages. With no empirical evidence, forest managers, as well as respected scientists like the late Salim Ali concluded that elimination of grazing by buffaloes would improve the habitat for the aquatic birds. The authorities imposed a ban in 1982 without alternative provisions for fodder. Several people were killed in the consequent protest, and the ban was enforced. It was subsequently discovered that cessation of buffalo grazing led to unchecked growth of a water loving grass, Paspalum and in fact a deterioration of the habitat, especially for the wintering waterfowl that this ban was meant to help [Vijayan 1987].
Adaptive Management
So, given the uncertainties in understanding and modelling the behaviour of complex ecosystems, and consequent inability to effectively implement either conservation or sustainable resource use, how do we proceed? Consider an analogy. Meteorologists acknowledge serious limitations to their ability to predict future events, for example, the exact course of a cyclone. To do their best they extensively use historical records, such as all available records of tracks of cyclones over the last century. While predicting the track of a given cyclone, they also make continual observations on its course and on all the relevant weather parameters such as pressure gradients in the region. Incorporating newer and newer observations, a process called “data assimilation”, they continually update their forecasts. Thus, they use historical information, continually monitor the situation, and modify their forecasts on the basis of all available information.
The modern theory of management of living resources suggests that it should follow such a model, accepting severe limitations to the ability to predict future system behaviour, and therefore trying to provide more limited, and at the same time, more detailed locality and time specific prescriptions. It should use detailed locality and time specific, including historical information. It should organise on-going monitoring of the situation and continually feed this information into updating management prescriptions. This type of system has been termed an “adaptive management system” [Walters 1986].
After all, ecologists are currently unable to offer any general guidelines for managing biodiversity or forest resources that would be of practical value in the field. There are no universal laws, for instance, that all human uses would lead to the erosion of all forms of biodiversity. Some uses would lead to erosion of some components of biodiversity, other uses to enhancement of some components. Since sweeping generalisations are not feasible, what is required is to try out various options, monitor the consequences, and make corrections along the way. Such an adaptive approach would firstly put together all available information, including the practical ecological knowledge of local people to assess what measures might be favourable. For instance, to enhance the capacity of wetlands like Bharatpur to support water birds, if such an assessment suggests the possibility that an elimination of grazing by buffaloes may be helpful, a decision would be made to explore the consequences of such elimination. This would not involve a complete ban for all times at all. Instead, it would entail elimination of grazing in some parts of the wetland, initially for a year. The consequences of such elimination would be carefully monitored and if they suggest a beneficial effect, there will be a continuation and perhaps increase in the portion of wetlands where grazing was eliminated. If it suggests a negative effect, the area over which grazing was eliminated would be reduced, and careful monitoring continued over the area on which grazing has been eliminated to assess if elimination of grazing over two consecutive years turns out to be helpful. There would be a further assessment after two years, and so on.
Indeed, ecologists at their best remain naturalists, aided by modern technology and computational devices, but for most practical purposes relying on accumulated experience. Many people of our countryside, too, are engaged in accumulating pertinent ecological experience while pursuing their manifold subsistence activities. The level of detailed ecological monitoring that they undertake out of sheer necessity cannot be matched by any formal scientific effort, in spite of all our advances in remote-sensing and informatics. What is then needed is to organise a system of utilising the information being thus continually gathered in the task of the adaptive management of biodiversity [Gadgil 2000].
Community-based Management
In fact, where people have been managing local natural resources on their own, they tend to adapt a flexible system akin to adaptive management. This, for example, has happened in case of many selfinitiated, informal village forest committees of Orissa, such as that of Dhani, involving five villages promoting the regeneration of 840 hectares of forest tract since 1987. The Dhani committee oversees the management of the forest as well as issues such as framing rules, resolving
Economic and Political Weekly June 2, 2007 conflicts, taking action against offenders, and distributing benefits. Over the years it has changed its rules in response to changing conditions. In the first year, for instance, no people or cattle were permitted to enter the forest. After that the area was opened for grazing outside the rainy season. At the same time, people were permitted to enter the forest to collect dry and fallen wood and leaf litter between July and February. Subsequently, poor households were permitted to extract a limited quantity of fuel wood [Perrings and Gadgil 2003].
There are however distinct limitations to local level management. These include problems that plague governance in our society at all levels, such as social divisions, and politicisation. However, the key local level issue is the lack of secure rights over forest and biodiversity resources and of any authority to prevent misuse by both insiders and outsiders [Ministry of Environment and Forests 2006]. Over the years a number of attempts have been made to overcome these problems, some as old as the provision for the constitution of “village forest” in the Indian Forest Act 1928. Other important initiatives include the Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme, formally in force since 1991, the Extension of Provisions of Panchayati Raj to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act 1996, the Biological Diversity Act (BDA) 2002 and most recently, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act (TFRA) 2006. TFRA very specifically envisages empowering gram sabha and village level institutions to protect wild life, forest, and biodiversity. It confers on the forest dwellers the responsibilities and authority for sustainable use, conservation of biodiversity and maintenance of ecological balance. TFRA establishes links to BDA by stating that “sustainable use shall have the same meaning as assigned to it in clause (o) of section 2 of the Biological Diversity Act”.
Provisions complementary to those under TFRA exist under the BDA, which provides for the establishment of a national biodiversity authority (NBA), state biodiversity boards (SBBs) and biodiversity management committees (BMCs) at the level of panchayats (gram, taluka and zilla), municipalities and city corporations. The BMCs are authorised to regulate harvests of biodiversity resources within their jurisdiction, and to charge collection fees for this purpose. They will have at their disposal “local biodiversity funds” into which such income, as well as other grants will be deposited. The NBA is authorised to scrutinise all Intellectual Property Rights related applications and to ensure that they properly acknowledge the contributions of the providers of indigenous knowledge. NBA is expected to consult all local BMCs in this respect and to ensure appropriate arrangements for equitable sharing of benefits. It is clearly desirable that the gram sabha under TFRA work in harmony with the BMCs.
There is today a lack of clarity as to the domain over which BMCs will have the authority to operate. In light of the TFRA, the jurisdiction of BMCs may be taken to extend over not only revenue lands, but customary common forest land within the traditional or customary boundaries of the village or the seasonal use of landscape. These forest lands would include protected and reserved forest as well as areas under wildlife sanctuaries and national parks. The rights of the scheduled tribes and other traditional forest dwelling (TFD) communities include the right to protect, regenerate, conserve, or manage any community forest resource which they have been traditionally protecting and conserving for sustainable use.
In order to establish proper synergy between the operation of TFRA and BDA, the mandate of the state level committees established under TFRA should be to:
Information Resources
Thus, by employing in a synergistic fashion the provisions of BDA and TFRA, it should be possible to set up a process of adaptive management of natural living resources to ensure sustainable use. The information resources supporting such a decentralised, flexible process will have many features distinct from the prevalent procedures of the forest department working plans. The working plans have too long a time horizon, and do not allow for adjustment on the basis of continual monitoring. They have been focused on timber and have paid scant attention to other biodiversity resources, or the broader socio-ecological context. Thus in Karnataka 300 plant species are commercially used by the pharmaceutical industry, but the forest department has very limited information, for instance on amounts realised while auctioning collection rights on just 27 species [Karnataka Planning Board 1996]. Most importantly, the working plan system is an exclusionary system; it does not encourage independent scrutiny and it has never led to any capacity building for the forest dwellers. It has also failed to lead to sustainable resource management.
We need now to replace such a “control and command” approach by an “inform and share” one to planning for decentralised management of resources. This would be an open, inclusive system that would be targeted at an appropriate, much more detailed, space-time scale. It would be a flexible system based on continual monitoring of biodiversity resources in a decentralised fashion, bringing on board local educational and research institutions along with concerned official agencies and working with community members. It would help build the capacity of gram sabhas. A methodology geared to these objectives has been developed, widely debated and field tested as a part of the follow up of the BDA [Gadgil 2001; Gadgil et al 2000; Gadgil et al 2006]. Under this act, all local bodies would have the responsibility of documenting and periodically updating the following information:
– Comprehensive information on the availability and knowledge of local
Subscription Numbers
Subscribers are requested to note their Subscription Numbers mentioned on the wrappers and quote these numbers when corresponding with the circulation department.
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biological resources, their medicinal or any other use or any other traditional knowledge associated with them;
The rules under BDA term this documentation as people’s biodiversity registers (PBR). The NBA has recommended in August 2006 that the methodology developed by the Indian Institute of Science be adopted as a starting point for such exercises (www.nbaindia.org).
The PBR documentation focuses on:
(i) people-natural resource links; (ii) landscape/waterscape of the study area;
(iii) local biodiversity elements;
(iv) people’s knowledge associated with biodiversity; (v) people’s perspectives on management issues; (vi) culminating in the formulation of a management plan to support the functioning of the local biodiversity management committee.
The different building blocks or entities included in the database would be related to each other in a variety of ways, and a well-designed information system should properly specify the relationships. The methodology endorsed by the National Biodiversity Authority incorporates a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) termed “PeBInfo” to support PBR exercises for this purpose.
Managing the Information
The most serious lacuna in our approach to managing information on India’s forest and biodiversity resources has been a lack of openness and willingness to take everybody along [Gadgil 2006]. The inclusive, open approach that is advocated here depends crucially on free access to all information to all people, except where very evident security concerns are involved. Today, this would be best ensured by posting all pertinent information on the web, in English, as well as in all Indian languages. The information to be thus made available should include all research and survey results, pertinent satellite imagery, resource maps, working plans and management plans, as well as ongoing schemes of habitat manipulation interventions, along with the information collected through the people’s biodiversity registers, and any other pertinent information. The web based information system may use both the normal as well as the wiki mode. The wiki mode permits any interested party to go to the website and add or edit, thus greatly facilitating civil society inputs.
We have today an important opportunity of putting in operation new ways of generating, sharing and managing scientific information relating to India’s forest, wildlife and biodiversity resources. The traditional actors on this theatre from the forestry establishment should undoubtedly continue to play a major role in this endeavour. But the process should now become much more inclusive, transparent, and open to the involvement of a wide variety of individuals and institutions like schools, colleges, universities, research institutions, NGOs, as well as civil society at large, regardless of the level of their formal education.
It is only when we successfully institute such a “share and inform, promote and facilitate” approach in place of the current “control and command” approach, that we would be able to do justice to India’s rich heritage of biodiversity resources and associated knowledge.
EPWEmail: madhav.gadgil@gmail.com
References
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Gadgil, M, K P Achar et al (2006): Ecology Is for the People: A Methodology Manual for People’s Biodiversity Register, National Biodiversity Authority, Chennai, also on www.nbaindia.org
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Prasad, S N (1984): ‘Productivity of Eucalyptus Plantations in Karnataka’, paper presented at the National Seminar on Eucalyptus, Kerala Forest Research Institute, Pcechi.
Prasad, S N and M Gadgil (1981): Conservation of Bamboo Resources of Karnataka, Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology, Bangalore.
Reid, W V, F Berkes, T J Wilbanks and D Capistrano (2006): Bridging Scales and Knowledge Systems: Concepts and Applications in Ecosystem Assessment’, Island Press, Washington, DC.
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Wesley, D G (1964): Revised Working Plan of the Yellapur and Mundgod Teak High Forests, Kanara Eastern Division, Karnataka Forest Department, Bangalore.
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