Report of the Tiger Task Force - PRS

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TIGER TASK FORCE REPORT JOINING THE DOTS ■3.8 The coexistence agendaConservation in India has been consistent about atleast one imperative: a protected area such as a tigerreserve is exclusively for the megavertebrate to roamin, with the corollary that people living inside thereserves must be relocated elsewhere. But overthe last 30 years, this imperative has becomeabstract, and abstracted from the real conditions thatexist in the tiger reserves, indeed most protectedareas, today.For, in reality, in the last 30 years only 80villages — some 16,000 families — have beenrelocated. Data with the Tiger Task Force shows 273villages continue to exist in the core areas of tigerreserves; the non-core areas are where about 1,000villages exist — in both cases, living precariously. Arough calculation shows that there could be 250,000to 350,000 people living in the total area the reservescomprise.Add to this livestock. This population is difficultto estimate but assuming that the roughly 65,000families residing inside own two-three head of cattle,the number would be 130,000 to 200,000.Indeed, it is logistically and financiallyimpossible to relocate even these people from just the28 tiger reserves; the imperative thus becomes evenmore difficult if all protected areas are taken intoaccount. Just to put the issue in perspective, tigerreserves occupy a little more than 1 per cent of thegeographical area of the country, while the protectedarea network — about 600 sanctuaries and nationalparks — account for 5.1 per cent of the country’s landarea. In other words, the number of people residing inprotected areas will be five times higher. There is nodefinite data on all villages that exist inside theseareas, but so far as people are concerned the countcould be three to four million people (see box: Howmany people live in protected areas?).So it is that the Tiger Task Force has asked for aclear relocation plan in those reserves whereconservation managers find human settlements arenegatively impacting tiger habitat — not notionally,but empirically. This plan must be based on criterionto identify the key conservation zones and natalareas of tigers. It must be speedily executed, and withsensitivity, so that the livelihoods of poor people canbe secured in their new homes (see 3.7: Therelocation agenda).Given the reality of the situation in the tigerreserves, the Task Force would like to examine anoption that is beginning to gain increasingimportance in the wider conservation network:coexistence.How many people live in protected areas?Nobody really knows. But the Indian Institute ofPublic Administration, in a 1989 project to surveythe management of national parks and sanctuariesin the country, had collected data on humanpopulations within protected areas. From thissurvey, it was found that 56 per cent of the nationalparks and 72 per cent of the sanctuaries reportedpopulations inside their areas. Based on theresponses received and extrapolation to otherunreported reserves, the status report computedthat there were three million people (600,000families) living within the protected area networkof India. It also found that 36 per cent of thenational parks and 56 per cent of sanctuariesreported removal of minor forest produce.In the late 1990s, this survey was repeated andan effort was also made to verify the informationon human habitation received from the managersof protected areas, with census data. Theresearchers estimated that there are 3.7 millionpeople (740,000 families) who live in the 600-oddprotected areas of the country.The questions then are: how long will it take torelocate people from such areas? Is this is a feasibleoption? Forester H S Pabla explains that in 1997there were 955 villages and 77,339 families livingin the 45 protected areas of Madhya Pradesh — onan average, 21 villages and 1,718 families in eachreserve. If these figures are extrapolated at thenational level, it would mean that there are over859,000 families (roughly 4.3 million people). Atthe current rate of compensation — Rs 1 lakh and2.5 ha of land per family — the resources neededwould be prohibitive. Madhya Pradesh, forinstance, has relocated only 33 villages (3 per centof the villages) till date — 26 of these in just onetiger reserve, Kanha. 1In the past 30 odd years, roughly 80 villageshave been relocated till date and roughly 14,000families shifted. If any of these estimates is accuratethen the country has relocated only 1.8 per cent ofthe families in the protected areas till date. Itbecomes vital, therefore, to work out policies forrelocation or coexistence. There is no other option.The way ahead 99
■ JOINING THE DOTS TIGER TASK FORCE REPORTCoexistence: why consider this option?If the way ahead is to come to a practical resolutionon how to balance, and manage, the livelihood needsof people with the imperatives of conservation, it isimportant to understand the impact of humanresource use on tiger reserve forests: is such usedetrimental per se? What is the threshold beyondwhich such use begins to so severely degrade tigerhabitat that the animal’s existence is trulyendangered? What if such use is not detrimental?Clearly, this terrain of competing needs is acomplicated one.Currently, the approach is rather simplistic:deny that competing needs exist. People who liveinside these reserves are treated as ‘biotic pressure’and policy seeks to remove them as fast as possible.But on the ground, relocation is not speedily done. Itbecomes a protracted process, leading to uncertaintyand the alienation of people from the park. PujaSawhney is a researcher who has studiedBandhavgarh tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh. Afterthe reserve was declared, she found, economichardships of forest-dependent people increased. Thelegal stipulation of eviction compounded theproblem — thinking that they would be relocated,people simply lost the incentive to use the forestsustainably. The fear of relocation, and resultantharassment, turned people here more hostile. In theabsence of viable alternatives, people here have nooption but to use the forest and this results inrecurrent friction between them and park managers. 2When the policy is one of denial, little gets doneto work out arrangements that will meet the needs ofboth conservation and people. The anger andhostility of people living within reserves, instead,continues to increase. The costs are huge: in puremoney terms as well as in pure conservation terms.Relocation related to the Tadoba-Andhari tigerreserve in Maharashtra is a good instance of this. In1955, an area of 116.55 sq km around the Tadoba lakewas declared a national park. Two villages wereresettled outside. Then in 1986, the area underprotection was expanded to include the Andhariwildlife sanctuary. Six villages now fell under thepark’s boundary; one of them — Pandharpauni,renamed Navegoan, or new village after the firstresettlement — faced possible relocation for a secondtime. The area was declared a tiger reserve in 1993,but a year before, all rights regarding collection ofminor forest produce were suspended, leading to thevillagers being impoverished. All developmentactivities have been stopped, pending relocation.Employment the forest department provides isreduced: the forest cannot be ‘worked’ any more. Sopeople survive by taking recourse to ‘illegal’practices — cutting bamboo into small pieces andsmuggling these out on bicycles. A bundle of 50pieces requires 15 bamboos and fetches a meagre Rs15 per bundle: equally, the forest cover is alsoturning meagre. 3As a result, protection is compromised. A majoreffort — if not the entire focus — of park managers isto ‘fight’ against ‘illegal’ activities. In Bandhavgarhtiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh, for instance, in fiveyears from 1995 to 2000, park authorities registered488 cases of illicit felling, 255 cases of illegal grazingand 62 cases of illegal bamboo extraction, amongothers. Increased hostility here translated into peoplesetting fires within the park and poisoning animals.In this period, authorities registered over 19 cases offire; researchers noted there were actually 73incidences of fire. The reserve here came underpressure both from within and outside. Of the totalcases of illegal activities, 25 per cent involvedvillagers from within the reserve and 37 per centinvolved villages at the fringe of the protected area.In such a situation, would relocation provideanswers? 4In this situation of uncertainty the ‘war ofconservation’ has only intensified. In the years tocome, it will be impossible to protect species againstwidespread hostility. The matter requires urgentresolution.So it is that the following issues must be betterunderstood:a. What are the legal provisions that govern therights of local people in protected areas?b. What is the empirical evidence that the use ofhabitats by people is endangering conservationefforts?c. What can be done to better manage competingneeds? What resolution does coexistenceprovide?Till date, government has no authentic estimate ofthe numbers of people who live within the variouscategories of protected areas in the country. As aresult, there is no empirical assessment of the impactthese people have on protected areas. Moreimportantly, there is no understanding of the impacta protected area has on the lives of people. In otherwords, what is the dependence of people on theselands to meet their subsistence and livelihood needs?In these circumstances, conservationist pressuresdrive governments into believing it is the bioticpressure of humans that is destroying our naturalheritage.The problem is compounded by the fact that inmany parts of the country, the rights of local peoplein forests remain unrecorded. In some areas, forestswere declared as ‘reserved’, without the rights oflocal people living in these lands being enumerated,100 The way ahead
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THE REPORT OF THE TIGER TASK FORCEJ
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ContentsIntroductionExecutive summa
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IntroductionThe Tiger Task Force wa
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05References
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