When the national forest policy of the country says something, the States do something else. It is always felt that there is no coordination between the States and the Centre when it comes to managing, maintaining and conserving forests across India.
Political whim always works for management of the forest resources and management policy of individual State. The first and foremost work of the forest management policy is to maintain environmental stability. The second responsibility of the management policy is conserving the natural heritages. The natural heritages are frequently damaged and destroyed in the name of development.
If we consider the case of the Polavaram project, we find that the principles and goals of the national forests policy 1988 are completely violated in its execution. Due to the construction of the dam, thousands hectares of natural eco systems of peninsular region are under threat. Similarly, tribal communities of Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Chhatisgarh are also going to be adversely hit due to the development project. Political whims should not be applied to destroy the natural heritages on the plea of nation’s development or development of a particular group of people. The areas which are going to be sacrificed in the name of development of a particular State are very ecologically sensitive. The project is also anti-tribal as a large number of tribal hamlets will be destroyed and the tribals dehomed for the dam. Since the dam involves breach of human rights violation, it has attracted notice of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
One important goal of the national forest policy is checking soil erosion. When the mother soil is eroded, the vitality of the soil is lost. The top soil profile of a particular area is known as mother soil and if such mother soil is lost for any reason, the earth remains dead soil. Where the Polavaram project will be built, it is the foothill of Eastern Ghat hill which will invite soil erosion.
Checking the destruction of sand dunes is also a motto of the forest policy. The sand dunes are formed in two regions of the globe. One region is the desert region and other one is coastal zone. The mangrove forests along the sea coast are the protector of sand dunes. The natural eco systems present along the sea coast of Bay of Bengal of Andhra Pradesh will be destroyed for the project as well.
The national forest policy emphasizes on plantation in degraded land, which means to protect land from degradations. The dam project will cause massive degradation of natural eco system of the Eastern Ghat region, coastal and peninsular regions.
The forest policy has set goals like (1) Existing forest land should be well protected, (2) Diversion of good and productive agricultural land to forestry should be discouraged, (3) conservation of total biological diversity of the States, (4) protection of pastures and (5) efficient management of minor forest produce, etc.
The goals have been thoroughly sacrificed for the execution of the dam project by the Forest and Environment Department of Government of India and the Andhra Pradesh Government.
The forest dwellers of the hill region are very poor as compared to the people of coastal plains. But the dam will cause havoc to innumerable forest living tribal communities.
The preservation of 2/3rd of hill forest areas is the most important factor for prevention of land erosion, land degradation and to ensure land stability of the fragile ecological systems. But the Central Government violated its own management guidelines by granting permission to the Andhra Pradesh Government for the Polavaram project without heeding to the genuine concerns of Odisha and Chhattisgarh.
(The writer is a former senior forest officer and an environmentalist. Tel no 9937460649)