A Czech premonition for the Western Ghats

Nowhere the virgin rain forests are too far from the greedy axe.

DNA, 15 May, 2013 

Travelling through central Europe, I spent a day in the Boubin forests last week. Now that was not expected to be ‘the highlight’ of my tour that included a customary pilgrimage to Auschwitz in Poland and rather off-track destinations in the Hungarian wine country. But the marvellous beech and spruce forests of the Sumava mountains in the Czech Republic stood out in their lofty grandeur.

Only a few patches of this pristine landscape survive and Boubinsky Prales is where the Vltava river, which flows under the majestic Charles Bridge in Prague, springs to life. It has a long history of conservation and enjoys legal protection since the 1960s. Yet, the axes have never been too far away.

As I was leaving India, environmentalists were agonizing over the recommendations of a high-profile panel — the second such in two years — for conservation of the Western Ghats. In effect, the environment ministry set up the second panel to examine and rationalise the exacting recommendations of the first. In the majestic silence of Boubin, I had a deja vu of sorts.

Barely two years ago, the Sumava forests became the centre of a controversy. Park officials were allowed to cut down trees on 12,800 hectares of one of the world’s most sensitive ecosystems, including primeval forests, wetlands and peat bogs apparently to check a bark-beetle infestation. Environmentalists claim that the so-called beetle epidemic was just an excuse to allow the logging lobby to enter the national park.

And that is not just a conspiracy theory. Jan Strasky, former park director, also announced plans for various projects, including ski lifts, widening of roads to help construction of private villas, and even setting up new municipalities inside the national park. The man seen as pro-logging did not mince words while spelling out his philosophy: "Nature is the enemy and… one must fight it."

Green politician and foreign affairs minister Karel Schwarzenberg was quoted in the Czech media calling Strasky's bluff: “The only person who genuinely benefits (from intervention and felling) is he who gets their hands on the timber. Sumava is the most tempting loot there is.”

To make matters worse, Czech environment minister Tomas Chalupa floated the plan to divide the national park in three clearly delimited zones: “The first zone would cover the most valuable nature conservation areas that would be fully protected against exploitation. The second zone would be split into two, with the first area benefitting from greater protection and earmarked for inclusion in the first zone and the second having less protection and not intended for transfer to the first zone. The third zone would be set aside for economic development and tourism."

Shockingly, the first zone covers merely 24% of the forest. Understandably, local green groups are up in arms. But political weakening of the Green Party in the recent years and the dominance of the Civic Democrats (to which Strasky belongs) does not augur well for these ancient forests.

I can't comment on the specific demerits of the demarcation plan in the Czech context, but it sounded quite like an antithesis to the recommendations made by the first of the two panels on the Western Ghats. The Gadgil panel proposed to declare the entire 129,037 sq km landscape as ecologically sensitive area (ESA), creating three ESZs (ecologically sensitive zones) within it, with different levels of protection.

He prescribed that the existing sanctuaries and ESZ1 would together cover 60 percent of this landscape. The 25 percent lowest priority areas would be marked as ESZ3 to allow all developmental activities with precautions. The remaining 15 percent area would become ESZ2. For instance, while no mining would be allowed within ESZ1, existing mines could continue in ESZ2 with a moratorium on new licences. In ESZ3, new mines could come up as well.

The Environment ministry’s review panel under K Kasturirangan, however, has done away with this graded approach and suggested that only 60,000 sq km — against Gadgil panel’s 77,000 sq km of highest-priority area — was worth protecting from industry and mines. Even within this smaller protected zone, the review panel proposed to allow hydro-electric projects under certain conditions — a loophole that could end up threatening the very integrity of these rain forests.

In an increasingly grim global scenario, the earth’s remaining ancient forests are disappearing rapidly. Some are literally crying for help. Despite strong conservation measures, Amazonian forests are being cut down at 4,656 sq km a year as of July 2012 — which incidentally is a record low in the past 25 years. Unable to prevent illegal logging, authorities are now hoping to catch the criminals with a small wireless tracking device that will be attached to trees and will send out signals once it is cut and moved in the zone of a cellular tower.

What can make a difference is political will. On Sunday, I woke up in Budapest to some heartening news from Indonesia. For the past two years, the government had imposed a moratorium on felling of forests to halt the deforestation that laid waste much of the country’s virgin habitat and brought in a rash of plantations of palm oil and pulp, paper and timber businesses. The moratorium is about to expire but, reported Reuters, president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was set to extend the ban for another two years.

Given the strong opposition from the palm oil planters, conservationists are not celebrating yet. But if Jakarta is serious in its commitment, the move will set a welcome benchmark in our troubled times. I am not too optimistic about those silent giants of Boubin that have been watching over the misty slopes for centuries. It will be a far bigger tragedy if the cloud forests of the Western Ghats go their way.