ANANYA SINGH | 6 MARCH, 2020
Climate Policies Must Include Voices of Indigenous Communities
“Women at Forefront of Forest Conservation”
While global climate change movements make headlines and ”highly-educated people in far
ANANYA SINGH | 6 MARCH, 2020
Climate Policies Must Include Voices of Indigenous Communities
“Women at Forefront of Forest Conservation”
While global climate change movements make headlines and ”highly-educated people in far-off cities make policy”, the role of the indigenous communities in mitigating the climate crisis goes unnoticed, a new report claims. Until recently, indigenous communities, to whom the “connection between forests and life is clear”, were rarely regarded as ‘agents’ of environmental conservation. However, the People’s Climate Report, claiming to be the first of its kind, attempts to upend this top-down narrative of the climate change movement by “amplifying voices from the grassroots”—specifically from Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh.
Many instances of locals, particularly women, leading the change on ground with their “holistic” view of the forest ecosystem are mentioned in the first People’s Climate Report, published by the People’s Climate Network (PCN)—a newly formed and still evolving alliance of activists, scholars and citizens across India and other parts of the world.
The coexistence of forests, wildlife and local communities is highlighted to provide a bottom-up perspective to climate change. To reveal a “major blind spot of the mainstream discourse about climate solutions”, the report begins with the tale of Parvati Devi.
Witnessing Jharkhand’s desertification due to rapid deforestation in natural resource-rich areas, Parvati Devi, two decades ago, realised the inextricable link between rapidly disappearing forests and everyday problems faced by the community, including depleting water supply and extreme weather conditions.
The report argues that the loss of forest cover, mostly for the “violent industry” of extractive mining, has led to a host of problems—depletion of groundwater, increase in net-carbon emissions, changes in local weather patterns, loss of traditional tribal livelihoods and a collapse of various plant and animal species—all in the name of ‘development’.
Devi, with other village women rallying behind her, took the lead in nurturing the forest ecosystem back to health. The women today patrol forests in groups of three, beginning at the crack of dawn. After convincing the locals and the forest department to allow them to lead the change, the women have also dug pools and made mud dams to conserve water.
Twenty years later, a verdant forest with abundant resources are evidence of the women’s success. Now assured of a steady supply of food and water, even the animals have returned.
“These natural resource dependent communities are among the poorest of the poor,” states the report. “They have not had a single day of formal education. And yet they have been the ones protecting this 200-hectare forest for the past twenty years or so.”
According to a member of the People’s Climate Network, the motivation of the local movements at the grassroots, mostly led by women, does not directly address climate change, but is more to do with efforts to restore food and ensure water security, especially “at a time and in a region where massive destruction of natural resources” has become the norm.
“These women understand that their wellbeing is intimately connected with the wellbeing of the forest, including its wildlife. They see things holistically - the water, the temperature, the animals and trees are not separate from their lives,” he told The Citizen.
He explained that women are “disproportionately” affected by the loss of forests. They also seem to have “deeper insights” about the link between forests and water, nutrition, livelihood and temperature moderation. In many cases, then, women seem to be taking the lead in conserving forests and replanting new ones.
“The sad reality of rural India is its dependence on distress migration and the resulting absence of menfolk, so in many of the places women were in the forefront of decision making about the protection of the forest. In places where men migrate less, men seemed to be involved as well,” he stated.
While the local populace might have solutions to immediate problems, the threat of displacement due to loss of forest cover still hangs heavy. Apart from losing their land and their livelihood, local conservation efforts to reclaim barren land razed for development projects