Ken-Batwa river link

Ken-Betwa River Link-up Approved, Tiger Reserve to Be Submerged

A panel headed by the environment minister Anil Madhav Dave has agreed to submerge more than 100 square km of Panna Tiger Reserve to link the rivers.

The Panna Tiger Reserve is seen in the distance, from the banks of the river Ken. Credit: briangratwicke/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

The Ken-Batwa inter-linking of rivers has got nod from the standing committee of the National Board of Wildlife. The panel headed by the Union Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave has agreed to submerge more than 100 square kilometres of one of the country’s prime tiger habitats, the Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, for the project that the NDA government had put its weight behind.

In a meeting held on August 23, the standing committee chaired by Dave cleared the project after some deliberations. Business Standard reviewed the minutes of the meeting, which are yet to be made public. Dave, immediately upon taking charge as the union environment minister, and well before the project had received mandatory clearances, had repeatedly said that India should go ahead with at least one inter-linking of river project to assess its consequences.

Union water resources minister Uma Bharti too had threatened to go on hunger strike if the project didn’t get a nod soon. Projects that specifically eat into tiger habitats need a positive recommendation from the National Tiger Conservation Authority on the basis of which the standing committee of the National Board of Wildlife accords the wildlife clearance.

The minutes of the meeting show that the group contended with and rejected the idea of bringing own the reservoir levels to protect some wildlife areas. The meeting of ministry experts and others concluded that bringing down the reservoir level by even 10 meters would reduce the reservoir storage capacity by 32%.

The minutes note that more than 100 square kilometres of the Panna Tiger Reserve would be lost ‘directly’ by the project. This includes around 50 square kilometres or about 10% of the critical tiger habitat. Out of a tiger reserve, the critical tiger habitat is considered central to the survival of the wild cat species in the region.

The tiger authority – a body headed by senior forest officer – has recommended that other nearby tiger bearing areas be also classified as tiger reserve to compensate for the loss. This includes Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary, Rani Durgavati Wildlife Sanctuary (both in Madhya Pradesh) and Ranipur Wildlife Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh. But these were not out rightly agreed to either while giving the project a clearance.

The minutes note: “While inclusion of the proposed areas for integration could be feasible and may be attempted a sit would require interstate and public deliberations.” The minutes further say: “The effort to integrate the said three wildlife sanctuaries within the Panna Tiger Reserve will be undertaken simultaneously and the management objective of these areas will be in context of treatment of the area as a part of tiger landscape.

“One of the non-government wildlife experts on the National Board of Wildlife, R. Sukumar, had earlier expressed his concerns about the “impact of the project, in view of its huge submergence,habitat loss and impact on Ghariyal Sanctuary etc.”, show records of the ministry.

Subsequently Sukumar was asked to be on an expert sub-committee to carry out a specific assessment of the project along with a retired forest officer H.S. Singh, and other government officials. The records of the August meeting of the standing committee show that both Sukumar and Singh did not attend the standing committee discussions that cleared the Ken-Batwa linking of rivers.

By arrangement with Business Standard

Interlinking of Rivers, Which Could Solve Drought Problems, Faces Trouble in BJP’s Home Turf

Are major faultlines within the BJP leadership coming in the way of the implementation of the grand inter-linking of rivers (ILR) project?

The interlinking of rivers project is facing some hurdles in BJP-ruled states. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Are major faultlines within the BJP leadership coming in the way of the implementation of the grand interlinking of rivers (ILR) project? While misconceptions and genuine doubts persist over the feasibility of the project and its impact on the lives of those it would impact directly or indirectly, Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti’s fervent appeal to the states, including those ruled by the BJP, to expedite the clearances of the ILR projects indicated that getting it off the ground is proving to be a major challenge.

The need for the project has never been felt more than it is now as parts of the country are dealing with severe droughts, coupled with one of the hottest summers in over a century. The proponents of the ILR scheme argue that since the country receives rain only for three months in a year, there is a need to store water adequately for the rest of the year.

It is also ironic that while about 40 million hectares of the country’s area experiences periodic flood, with about 1500 human lives and one lakh cattle lost to it every year, the country is not able to divert or store much of this water. On the other hand, about a third of the total population resides in areas that are drought prone, spread over nearly 108 million hectares.

It was in light of this dichotomy that the Supreme Court had on February 27, 2012, directed the Centre and concerned states governments to implement the ambitious ILR project in a timely manner, and had also asked the Centre to appoint a high-powered committee for the planning and implementation of the project.

The project was, however, not devoid of shortcomings. Many experts feared that diverting water would lead to newer problems, deprive the Adivasi and other tribal communities of their land holdings and may even cause flooding and soil erosion problems.

Some like Eklavya Prasad of Megh Pyne Abhiyan, which has been working in the field of drinking water and sanitation in flood-prone north Bihar where the ILR is expected to first cover the districts of Khagaria, Samastipur and Begusarai, questioned how can one expect much from it when the Kosi canal system built by the British was not able to prevent misery from floods.

But the Centre is moving ahead as the gains or the reduction in pain due to the ILR far outweighs any negative consequences. Far too many lives are being lost each year to floods and droughts and the economic cost of these too is prohibitive.

Realising that the misconceptions and political opposition is holding the project back, at the ninth meeting of the special committee for ILR, Bharti said the drought had necessitated the need for the removal of the misgivings and the quick implementation of the ILR. The interlinking of rivers can prove effective in dealing with such situations, she said.

“Inter-linking of rivers will not affect flow of sweet water in the rivers. We are not stopping the flow of sweet water of the rivers, but will only be transferring the extra water of these rivers which comes during monsoon and floods to those rivers which have less water. This will not affect the flow of water of any river in the country,” she assured.

Many states like Odisha have raised doubts about the project. Referring to it, Bharti said there were many misconceptions about the Mahanadi-Godavari link in Odisha. “People used to believe that Mahanadi does not have sufficient water and even then its water is being transferred to Godavari. But when it was explained to them that first extra water will be brought to Mahanadi through Subern Rekha-Mahanadi link, it helped in removing their misconceptions about the Mahanadi-Godavari link,” she said.

Similarly, referring to the Ken-Batwa link as the first project to go onstream, Bharti expressed the hope that work on the first phase will start within three months. However, she urged the government of Madhya Pradesh to provide necessary forest clearance at the earliest so that work on the first phase of the project could begin soon. That she had to make the appeal showed that Shivraj Singh Chauhan, who had succeeded Bharti as the chief minister of the state, has not facilitated her dream project in any way.

That the water resources minister has also not received adequate support from the other BJP-ruled states of Gujarat and Maharashtra became clear when Bharti urged these governments to provide their clearance to the Daman Ganga-Pinjal and Par-Tapi-Narmada link projects.

The Daman Ganga-Pinjal link would enhance the supply of water to Mumbai. From Pinjal dam, this link would carry 3,741 million litres per day of water. Now compare this with each of the two water trains that were sent to Maharashtra recently. They carried just 2.5 million litres of water each. The link would supply nearly 1500 train-loads of water daily..

Bharti said she would discuss the two projects with Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in Mumbai on May 3. The minister acknowledged that as issues pertaining to tribal areas are coming in the way, she would visit the affected areas and sit with officials of both states to resolve them.

Director General of National Water Development Agency (NWDA) Masood Husain said the National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, has submitted the draft report on a water balance study of the Mahandi-Gadavari link project to the Odisha government and after obtaining its views will submit a final report to the special committee.

Status of intra-state link projects

Husain also provided the status of the intra-state link projects. He said 46 proposals for such links have been received from nine states, namely Maharashtra, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Odisha, Bihar, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh. “The pre-feasibility report (PFRs) of 35 intra-state links have been completed. The DPR of two intra-state links for Burhi Gandak-Ganga and Kosi-Mechi received from Bihar are under consideration with Central Water Commission.”

However, the delay at the end of the Central Water Commission was highlighted by the representative of the Bihar government who charged that the proposals has been pending with the Commission for over two years.

For the ILR programme, which seeks to ensure greater equity in the distribution of water by enhancing its availability in drought-prone and rainfed area through interlinking of rivers, 14 links have been identified under the Himalayan rivers component and 16 links under peninsular rivers component for inter-basin transfer of water. These links have been identified on the basis of field surveys, investigation and detailed studies.

Twenty one months have passed since the union cabinet approved the constitution of a special committee on the ILR to expedite the projects, but progress has been slow. And if Bharti is to be believed, the BJP’s own state governments can remove many of the obstacles coming in the way of the project.

For How Long Will We Pretend All is Well With Our Tigers and Their Habitats?

The government’s focus on exact population numbers where none exist, dismissal of habitat development and deceptive allocation of funds is letting India pretend it’s helping its tigers.

A mural depicting two tigers, in J.P. Nagar, Bengaluru. Credit: nagarjun/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

On the eve of the 3rd Asian Ministerial Meeting on tiger conservation that is being held in New Delhi, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) put out a press release congratulating itself on bringing up India’s tiger numbers “from 1706 in 2005 to 2226 in 2014”, a 30% increase. It stated that the uptick had come about due to the longstanding efforts of the Indian government in looking after the species, extending the number of tiger reserves in the country (to the current 49) and various other technical improvements, such as deployment of e-surveillance, conservation drones and smart patrolling.

The numbers game has been an important part of the government’s tiger conservation rhetoric since Project Tiger was launched in 1972. Such rhetoric in the pre-tiger crisis day (i.e., before February 2005, when the tiger went missing in some key tiger reserves) had conveniently masked a dip in the numbers of the species since the 1990s, primarily due to poaching.

Problems in the methodology

Stating exact tiger numbers is technically erroneous. Currently, the methodology of estimating tigers currently used in the country, based on stratified random sampling, does not allow exact figures to be determined, rather only as a population estimate with an error margin. The result of using exact figures is that even a small increase, say from 3,400 to 3,480, will be treated as a population increase while it could simply just be part of the inherent error in the estimate. A perusal of the estimation reports suggest some of the population ‘increase’ can be ascribed to expanded area of sampling since 2006.

Some reserves, such as the Sunderbans, and states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Arunachal Pradesh were left out in the first round of sampling in 2006-07 due to logistical constraints. Further, it seems that the intensity of camera-trapping has also increased over the years, leading to improved chances of detecting tigers in the wild. Much of the detected increase in the tiger population, estimated as 30% over 10 years, is also biologically unrealistic given the current knowledge about the species.

Apart from the methodological dilemmas, the tiger numbers game has unfortunately translated itself into popular public discourse as well. Due to the overwhelming emphasis on numbers, every tiger that is killed by territorial in-fighting, or trapped out for its repeated human-killing behaviour, is grieved publicly by conservationists and animal welfare experts. Such lobbyists do not realise that in order to attain the larger conservation goals, a few individuals have to be sacrificed along the way if we are to prevent alienation of local communities. At the same time, we need alert and committed forest personnel who are capable of preventing unauthorised poaching of the species. The poor welfare, sorry working conditions and paltry compensation packages of our front-line personnel, working under physically stressful conditions in the field, unfortunately never attracts the same hue and cry that we observe over missing tiger individuals – nor will such issues make it to the international fora.

From small-scale numbers to large-scale habitats

The emphasis on tiger numbers alone also takes the focus away from larger issues of biodiversity conservation: the need to preserve the entire range of habitats and species present in a tiger reserve and across the country. The only habitat management undertaken in tiger reserves is focussed on the needs of tigers and their ungulate prey, such as maintenance of grasslands or creation of waterholes, and ignoring other species that may depend on different types of microhabitats. For instance, Sariska Tiger Reserve, located in a naturally arid zone, is now littered with cemented water-holes and so has unusually abundant cheetal deer that prefer these moist habitats. In some extreme cases, tiger reserves now emulate tame safaris, rather than the wilderness, where a few habituated tigers provide shows to tourists. There are as many as 680 other Protected Areas (PAs) across the country that are languishing due to a lack of management attention, but support the conservation function of tiger reserves by providing connectivity.

While we are busy heralding the success of our tiger conservation story, we are ignoring the large scale fragmentation and degradation of habitats by uncritically giving the go-ahead to massive destructive projects across the country such as widening of highways through tiger habitats, damming of our remaining rivers, river-linking which will create deep canals and reservoirs, high speed trains and unplanned suburban sprawls.

A recent study (by Chundawat et al. 2016) based on field data and modelling shows that even relatively large tiger reserves such as Panna, located in the Vindhyas of Madhya Pradesh, have now become little more than game safaris in which small, unviable populations of tigers exist in an increasingly restricted area. The study shows Panna Tiger Reserve covering 543 km sq., with only a 40% chance of holding on to its tiger population of 10-15 adults. Further, any chances of this small population surviving are likely to be drastically reduced due to the proposed Ken-Betwa river link, which will submerge about 41 km sq. of habitat, ruin riparian ecology and cut off connectivity to surrounding reserved forests and agricultural corridors.

This is not to say that such developmental activities should be stopped completely. Rather a rational approach has to be taken. To protect ecosystems and landscapes from the onslaught of rapid development, large ‘roadless’, and ‘damless’ areas have to be consolidated through proper landscape-level planning. Ideally a mosaic of core tiger habitat, lightly used forests, agricultural corridors and low-intensity built-up zones has to be maintained in every region and sub-region, that would allow movement and dispersal of wildlife populations without causing harm to human economy. The practice of indiscriminate clearance of infrastructure projects has therefore to be reviewed. After all, only 6% of the country is covered by the PA network. Can we not safeguard this paltry area, especially given its proven importance for long-term ecological security and economy?

More funds, even more reserves

Despite its celebration of increasing tiger numbers, there is inadequate financial commitment by the Indian government to tiger reserves and the rest of the PAs network. While the MoEFCC states in its latest advertisement that tiger reserves conserve forest stock to the tune of Rs.2,200-65,600 crore, and that carbon sequestered in forests is worth Rs.99.7 crore, there is little evidence of even remotely similar allocations to conserving natural habitats in the country. On the contrary, the overall financial outlay for wildlife in the country has been reduced by as much as 85% in the Twelfth Five Year Plan compared to its predecessor. This leaves little to efficiently run tiger reserves, let alone the 680 other PAs in the country, with the required appropriate investments in local community development, compensatory activities, scientific research and monitoring or even training of forest staff.

Even the most basic functions such as patrolling and reforestation are now at risk, according to some PA managers. In the run-up to the 3rd Asian Ministerial Meeting, an ‘enhanced budget’ of Rs.300 crore for tiger conservation in the fiscal year 2016-17 was announced by the minister, yet this amount will now be spread over nearly 25% more reserves than in 2010 – and the expected funding will now be subject to 50% matching of funds by state governments. And even this enhanced level of funding adds up to Rs.6.12 crore per reserve, which is a paltry sum given their large areas and need for larger landscape management. So how long can we play this numbers game and pretend that all is going well with tigers and their habitats?

During this ministerial meeting, let our heads of state take a pledge that wildlife and ecosystems will get the unhindered space as well as the finances to exist as viable entities. The TX2 goal, to double the number of tigers by 2022, to be discussed at the meeting needs more than just rhetoric.

Ghazala Shahabuddin is a Senior Fellow with Centre for Ecology, Development and Research, and works on avian ecology, forest management and wildlife conservation policy.