June 5 is approaching and articles galore have started pouring in to newspaper offices, some well thought out and resonating with the reader; others largely academic and stink of a cut and paste job. Governments have conveniently used this day to express concern about the environment mainly by offering lip service. No sustained environmental awareness programme has been taken up in Meghalaya. Those days of social forestry are now over and just as well, for, the money meant to procure saplings went into the pockets of forest officials. It was quite an open secret but one that a society which is respectful of the wealthy preferred to keep under wraps. Such legends were only whispered in gossip circles. There was no RTI then as there is now. But even with the RTI, are we able to make much headway in unearthing the scams in the Department of Environment and Forests? Why did the head honcho of the Department bring in a ‘redefinition’ of forests shortly before demitting office? Forests in Meghalaya have been redefined to suit the interest of the mining lobby, since there can be no place in Meghalaya which is a continuous tract of minimum four hectares land with more than 250 naturally growing trees of 15 cm in diameter. Earlier the Meghalaya Forest Department went by the definition provided by the United Khasi and Jaintia Hills District Council which is 25 trees of a particular girth in one acre of land. This second definition is still the most sensible one for Meghalaya.
But keeping aside the definition of forests, there is no word from the Department on reclaiming tracts and tracts of degraded land that were once lush forests in East Khasi Hills, alone. There isn’t even an attempt to arrest and give exemplary punishment to those who cause forest fires during the dry months. A visiting ecologist said that burning of grass and shrubs during the dry months is ecologically destructive because when the first rains come before the grass and other plants have resurfaced, there is heavy run off and soil lies completely exposed to the elements.
Government has always used the alibi of land being in private hands as one of the reasons for rapid degradation. But the Constitution has ample clauses to enable the Government to make interventions when private activities impact on the larger interests of the collective and when one person uses his/her land to the detriment of the larger community. Catchments are repositories of potable water. If they are in private land they should be acquired by the community for its greater good because water is a ‘common property resource’ (CPR). These issues are germane to the discussions on environmental conservation as we observe World Environment Day on June 5. Let us not turn this day into a ritual.