World After 5Th Extinction

Year – 2/Issue – 3/ November - December’16 World after 5 th Extinction V Featured Topic : We are at…. WAR RISK (Concluding Part) V Editors’ Desk : Whose Forest is This!! V Post Editorial : Forest Interrupted V Story Room : Arnab Basu A day trip to “Sangam” V Theme Poster : The Cold War Orangutan of Bukit Lawang, Sumatra The global arms race after 1945 produced incalculable accelerations of every tool of destruction. One of the smallest weapons, though multiplied almost countless times, has been (1961-1975), as the U.S. Air the land mine. Some one hundred million unexploded anti- Force applied Agent Orange personnel mines remain around the planet, littering rural and other defoliants to the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and many other war-torn countries, forests of Indochina. In grievously retarding the restoration of post-war farms, pastures, addition to fourteen million forests, and water regimes. These and a Pandora's box of other tons of bombs and shells, weapons have spread through many unstable regions of the American planes sprayed forty- post-colonial world—Africa and elsewhere. Grim contributions four million litres of Agent to wars both civil and trans-boundary, have also extracted a Orange and twenty-eight widespread ecological toll on forests, savannas, and farmlands. million litres of other defoliants over Vietnam. The result was Equally widespread, by the time the Cold War ended in 1990, serious damage to 1.7 million long-term pollution effects of military industry left many hectares of upland forest and locations severely poisoned. Weapons production sites and mangrove marshes, widespread testing grounds in the United States required massively soil poisoning or loss of soil, expensive clean-ups of a broad spectrum of toxic wastes. Even and destruction of wildlife and more appalling, large areas of Soviet and Eastern European land fish habitat. and air had become virtual wastelands, and even the Arctic Ocean, north of Russia was severely polluted. Chemical warfare Most potent of all in the post- reached a new level of destruction in the Second Vietnam War 1945 years, the nuclear 1 | Page E-mail: [email protected] Website : www.exploringnature.org.in Year – 2/Issue – 3/ November - December’16 technology became the most ominous environmental threat in history, though its greatest impact resulted from the peacetime armament race rather than from actual war. Until international nuclear-testing freeze conventions came into effect, weapons testing sites, such as Soviet sites in Central Asia and Britain's testing grounds in central Australia, became uninhabitable for almost all forms of life. And in the southern Pacific Ocean, islands and their coastal reefs, their civilian populations entirely removed by force, became unfit for life as a result of American Johnson B. Lyndon - and French nuclear weapons testing. Beyond that, in the nuclear industrial complex, many weapons production and storage sites became highly radioactive. In the United States, nuclear facilities in Washington state, Colorado, and elsewhere States United the of President man can no longer walk with became radioactive sewers. Soviet nuclear weapons sites were thing more than the miracles of even more radioactive. the beauty salvage and destroyed t through with it." withit." through t Finally, twentieth-century warfare has made a major contribution to warming of the global atmosphere. Military establishments consume great amounts of fossil fuels, contributing directly to global warming. The Persian Gulf War of 1991 was the most notorious case of atmospheric pollution in wartime, as the plumes of burning oil wells darkened skies for months, far downwind. It now seems that the fires caused less regional and global air pollution than was feared in their immediate aftermath, though they precipitated heavy pollution on nearby deserts, farmlands, and the Gulf's waters. In the present state of research, there is a wide need for more studies of the long-term ecological legacies of warfare. The immediate impacts of conflicts are far easier to assess, especially, since the wars of the nineteenth century. But they do not necessarily represent the ecological or agro-ecological viability of the longer run, as this also reflects the great capacities of societies to restore damaged landscapes to productivity. The great marshes of southern Iraq are a dramatic recent example of restoration. In the aftermath of the Gulf War is destroyed, it can never be recaptured. And once ld as it was in the beginning, not just after we go we after just not beginning, inthe was it as ld of 1991, Saddam Hussein retaliated against the tribal sheikhs been has what restore we must destruction, from it and Shia population of the south by diverting the flow of the itude rather than contempt, we must leave them some Tigris and Euphrates rivers, turning some 90% of the marshes wasted.” be hissustenance and into a desert wasteland. After his overthrow early in the present Iraq war, a coalition of local people, private volunteer organizations and the United Nations Environmental Program began a program of re-flooding the marshlands. In spite of continued violence in the region, roughly one third of the marshes have been restored to something like their previous health for both the Marsh Arabs and the fecundity of fish, migratory birds, and other species. This example suggests, the long history of restoration work deserves greater emphasis than most of our narratives of wars' impacts acknowledge. “If future are generations to us remember with grat wor the of glimpse a them leave must We technology. save and side the country protect not only “We must and charm of our cities … Once our natural splendor wither will hisspirit nature, at wonder or beauty 2 | Page E-mail: [email protected] Website : www.exploringnature.org.in Year – 2/Issue – 3/ November - December’16 In an affidavit to the apex court in Jun 2004, Government of Editors’ Desk: India, admitted to the historical injustice that have been levied upon tribes and co- habitants of the woods of the Whose Forest is This??? subcontinent started by WPA, On 29th December 2006, an Act of Parliament, a path-breaking 1972 followed by FCA, 1980 legislation, has received the assent of the President of India that was in the name of acknowledges the injustice meted out to India’s forest dwellers, environmental protection, as particularly tribes. The act is “The Scheduled Tribes and Other these acts were at loggerheads Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, vis a vis recognising the rights 2006” popularly known as Forest Right Act, 2006. In the of the tribes, an immediate preamble of the law it was claimed that the act recognised the need to address to the customary and historical rights of scheduled and non-scheduled situation has arisen. Latter tribe communities, who have been residing in forests in India 2004 the National Advisory but whose rights couldn’t be recorded earlier and undo the Council ultimately decided to “Historical Injustice” done to the tribes and forest dwellers since find a solution to this problem pre-independence. FRA recognised that jungle dwellers have once and for all. After equal rights in the forests to the flora and fauna and they are an discussing with the Ministry of important and integral part of forests. The provision that was Environment and Forestry and enshrined in FRA recognised that forest inhabitants would be various Tribal Activist Groups, involved in sustainable development, conservation of it was decided that a new biodiversity and maintenance of the ecological balance, as they legislation was needed to be have a vast habitual knowledge on this. In that way, not only formulated to recognise and the rights were given to customary forest dwellers for usage of protect the rights of Scheduled forest resources but also for its management and governance. tribes and other traditional forest dwellers. With the A Legislation, to be a successful one, requires other acts enactment of FRA 2006, a governing the similar subject and the spirit of state during radical shift of power and implementation. It this case, neither has been witnessed. To governance of the forest took understand the problem better, we have to go back decades ago. place. FRA recognised the The Forest policy of 1952 maintained that for the conservation “citizens” of the jungle as an and protection of forests, it was important to control the essential part in the exploitation of the minor forest produce. When the Forest conservation of forests. The (Conservation) Act 1980 was brought into action, situation got locals of forest started taking worse. It took all the forest lands under the control of the Union part in decision making Government and still allowed the old colonial acts to play their process, more and more, in parts in the name of good and development. It put the regard to conservation of forest aborigines at the mercy of the bureaucratic system. Human and they have been given residents of the jungle for centuries were not allowed to graze access to forest resources to inside forest and allowed to collect even minor forest produce live on. A process of against high value permits. All their agricultural lands came sustainable development under the forest, which was allocated before, now called off started. overnight. Along with those pro-colonial bureaucratic legislations, in the name of conservation, the commercialisation Meanwhile, some other of forest made the situation even worse. Where they managed to developments occurred. The live on minor forest produce paying high permit fees, were FCA 1980 stipulated that forest under tremendous exploitation by forest department lands could only be used for bureaucracy and local forest contractors. Forest guards had a “non-forest” purposes like cut in minor forest products and the nexus of contractors and cultivation of tea, coffee, high ranked forest officers forced them to work for free, spices, rubber, palms, oil- exploiting their illiteracy and poor economic condition.

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