SAVE HASDEO FOREST

 

Save Hasdeo forest

Nature conservation is the moral philosophy and conservation movement focused on protecting species from extinction, maintaining and restoring habitats, enhancing ecosystem services, and protecting biological diversity. A range of values underlie conservation, which can be guided by biocentrism, anthropocentrism, ecocentrism, and sentientism, environmental ideologies that inform ecocultural practices and identities.[2] There has recently been a movement towards evidence-based conservation which calls for greater use of scientific evidence to improve the effectiveness of conservation efforts. As of 2018 15% of land and 7.3% of the oceans were protected. Many environmentalists set a target of protecting 30% of land and marine territory by 2030

 

Introduction

Conservation goals include conserving habitat, preventing deforestation, halting species extinction, reducing overfishing, and mitigating climate change. Different philosophical outlooks guide conservationists towards these different goals.

The principal value underlying many expressions of the conservation ethic is that thenatural world has intrinsic and intangible worth along with utilitarian value – a view carried forward by parts of the scientific conservation movement and some of the older Romantic schools of the ecology movement. Philosophers have attached intrinsic value to different aspects of nature, whether this is individual organisms (biocentrism) or ecological wholes such as species or ecosystems.

More utilitarian schools of conservation have an anthropocentric outlook and seek a proper valuation of local and global impacts of human activity upon nature in their effect upon human wellbeing, now and to posterity. How such values are assessed and exchanged among peopledetermines the social, political and personal restraints and imperatives by which conservation is practiced. This is a view common in the modern environmental movement. There is increasing interest in extending the responsibility for human wellbeing to include the welfare of sentient animals.

 

Save Hasdeo forest

 

It is situated between North Korba, South Surguja and Surajpur districts of Chhattisgarh. Spread over 170,000 hectares, this forest is known for its biodiversity. According to the 2021 report of Wildlife Institute of India, Hasdeo Aranya is home to 10,000 people belonging to tribal castes like Gond, Lohar and Oraon.

 

 

Adivasi men look out on the vast PEKB coal mine that’s destroyed much of their ancestral land, Hasdeo Forest in Chhattisgarh.

India’s Adivasi (Indigenous) communities are resisting a plan to destroy vast areas of their forests for coal mines. They’re up against huge corporations and the most powerful people in the country, and they desperately need outside support.

The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, wants a massive expansion of coal mining in India, to one billion tonnes per year. 80% of the new mining areas are on Adivasi lands.

Despite a decade of resistance from Adivasis, Modi’s government has approved a massive new coal mine in the rich Hasdeo Forest in Chhattisgarh state.

Over 20,000 Adivasi people live in, depend upon and revere the forest. Their lands and livelihoods will be wrecked, and the mine will be a disaster for the fight against the climate crisis.

Please email Narendra Modi and ask him to stop mining in Hasdeo Forest and ensure no mining occurs on Adivasi lands without their genuine consent. There’s not a moment to lose.

 

 

The environmental impact

 

As of May 2022, two studies by the ICFRE and Wildlife Institute of India (WII) have come out. Both have underlined the importance of biodiversity in the region that mining will undoubtedly affect. They also address the issue of human-elephant conflicts, noting that while Chhattisgarh has less elephants compared to other states, it accounts for a significant percentage of conflict due to habitat loss or clearing of forests. Further deforestation could lead to elephant movements spilling over to urban areas, these studies have noted.

The ICFRE also noted the loss of the natural environment and the “serious impact on the community in form of loss of livelihood, identity, and culture” with regards to tribal people living in the area, if mining were to be allowed. But it backed considering mining in four blocks: Tara, Parsa, PEKB and Kente Extension with “strict environmental safeguards”. It further said that the PEKB block was a “habitat to rare, endangered and threatened flora and fauna”.

 

 

The protests

Some organisations, as well as individuals, have actively campaigned against the mining in the area over the last decade. In October 2021, a 300-km-long march was undertaken by around 350 people from tribal communities to Raipur alleging “illegal” land acquisition.

On May 24, RRVUNL CMD told ANI after meeting officials in Chhattisgarh: “Rajasthan will plunge into a severe power crisis if it fails to get coal from Chhattisgarh”.

He claimed that activists were “misguiding” local people, and that more than 8 lakh trees had been planted in Chhattisgarh against those felled for mining On May 25, a press conference was held in Delhi ‘by Friends of Hasdeo Arand’ who alleged that fake gram sabhas were constituted to indicate “consent” by the tribal people for mining activities. They said that Hasdeo Arand’s issue was not merely local, but linked larger issues of jal, jungle, zameen (water, forest, and land rights) of the marginalised groups.

                                                                                                                        BY - SHUBHAM JAISWAL