What should Kerala do now?

How should Kerala rebuild after the immense disaster? If we do wish to prevent or mitigate such disasters, we should use a radically different approach to conservation and development. Here is some advice from Prof. Madhav Gadgil, who chaired the panel on Western Ghats:

·      Abandon the short-sighted attempts in building man-made capital (buildings in hilly forests, encroachments on wetlands and rivers, and stone quarries) and enhance the sum total of man-made, natural, human and social capital.

·      Acknowledge that it is local communities that have a genuine stake in the health of their ecosystems and possess an understanding of the working of the same.

·      Respect the right of local communities to decide what kind of development they want and what kind of conservation measures they would like to see put in place.

·      Provide positive incentives to people such as payment of conservation service charges for protecting important elements of biodiversity such as sacred groves and payment towards soil carbon enrichment by switching to organic farming.

·      Empower local bodies at the ward, gram panchayat, and town and city levels to prepare reports on the status of the environment and to decide on how a substantial portion of the budget should be spent on the basis of these reports.

·      Set up Biodiversity Management Committees of citizens and empower them to document the status of the local ecosystems and biodiversity resources, and regulate their use.

·      Fully implement the Forest Rights Act and empower not only tribals, but all traditional forest dwellers to control, manage and market non-timber forest produce.

·      Finally, come up with appropriate conservation and development plans that are properly fine-tuned to locality- and time-specific ecological and social conditions.

In short, we should adopt a broad-based inclusive approach to conservation and development. Such an approach is applicable to and necessary for most parts of India.

Source: Article by Prof. Gadgil in The Hindu, August 30, 2018