The Myth of Coexistence .. People and Wildlife
By Valmik Thapar

At the turn of the 21st century India saw governance of the natural world reach its lowest ebb. Governments had failed to prioritise it and the lack of reforms in this sector meant that it was relegated to oblivion. Maybe the process was partly intentional so that nature's treasure trove could be properly looted. Let's never forget that when the tigers of one of our premier tiger reserves in India went extinct the protection staff in India had vacancies to the tune of 20,000 men.

Many human rights groups took advantage of this mess by pushing for people centred governance where locals could be given the reigns of power. This suited the government of the day who did not want to do a post mortem on their failures or generate new systems for effective governance. The activist groups without serious thinking or homework on such a critical issue were creating another monster and now fully supported by government. No one bothered to understand the practical realities of the day and as one and all jumped on the idea, co-existence became the new buzz word of the day. Few realized what it meant to coexist with tigers, lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos, wild buffalos or bears. Few cared. Ignorance is bliss.

This is one of the greatest tragedies in the world of conservation today. Propagating the myth of coexistence between people and wildlife is fashionable to support and deflects from the real issues of saving the worlds wildlife against endless human intervention. It has also become a subject of great debate in the developed and developing world which has lost so much of its wildlife. I think there was a natural coexistence between man and wild animal many centuries ago when populations were small, cultures traditional, and lifestyles less exploitative and intrusive. As we developed and grew both in population and economically we kept destroying this balance. The fragility of coexistence was based on a dependency towards nature and a fear and respect of it and the minute man thought he could live without this integral connection this relationship became fraught with conflict. With the passage of each year this conflict has only increased irrespective of the endless rhetoric on the subject.

In today's world there are few examples of a balanced coexistence between humans and wildlife. In India there may be a few examples of this in the Andaman and Nicobar islands and a few in the forests of central and southern India as the remnants of Indias last indigenous tribals struggle to balance their lives with the environment around them. In the last ten years of so called economic development traditional cultures and relationships have been wiped out in the race for 9% economic growth. Pretty much the same thing has happened across the planet as we race to satiate our greed for economic progress in this strangely globalised world. Todays rhetoric is about the great coexistence between the aborigines and Kakadu National Park in Australia but most forget that in an area of 25,000sq kms there are barely 300 aborigines! In India an area like this would have one million stake holders making it impossible to protect the wilderness. Forget about co-existence. And we still create conservation projects and models where we focus on the needs of people forgetting the primary objectives which are the needs of wildlife. The World Bank in India spent more then 60 million dollars on seven prestigious wildlife areas in the hope of connecting poverty alleviation to the saving of a species. In my opinion they failed miserably and it was a complete waste of time effort and money. We have become experts today at crafting proposals that mix and merge menus so that they appear people friendly. This is a fatal error. By doing this we destroy the very basis of what we strive to protect.

Let's look at people and tigers in India. In the last decade many of our activist human rights groups have taken on the cause of the forest dweller articulating the myth of coexistence between man and tiger conveniently forgetting that large carnivore never coexisted with man anywhere on this planet. Few of these groups do their homework. In India between 1860 and 1960 at least 100,000 tigers were shot dead by man, 35,000 people were killed by tigers and nearly one million livestock were eaten by tigers, leopards and lions. The four legged animals that man keeps are food for the big cats and this relationship has since times immemorial been full of conflict. In fact this problem only resolved a little bit in the early 1970s when India declared hundreds of sanctuaries and national parks and attempted to make them inviolate bringing down the statistics of both man eating and cattle lifting. The ignorant today articulate all kinds of questions. Tigers or People? Can India with all its poverty afford to save its wild tigers? How can people and tigers live in harmony? The answers are equally simple. If you want to save tigers you have to separate human beings from tigers. They just can not live together. And when you are able to save wild tigers in inviolate tracts you conserve the water regime. Nearly 300 rivers and perennial streams are born in the tiger's forest. This water reaches nearly 100 million poor people. So it is never one or the other. Focus on saving the tiger and the forest it will only prevent misery which will afflict millions of people. And in a world gone mad with its economics and whipped by climate change and global warming the so called intelligent should stop asking silly questions. Today in India thousands of villages are desperate to shift out of forests and partake in the 'new life' where you get television, electricity and the proximity to urban landscapes. In fact the governments can not deal with the demand for resettlement. In India most want to leave natural landscapes for human dominated landscapes as long as they are resettled with dignity. But our activist groups are so averse to this that they have managed to influence legislation that will create severe obstacles in the resettlement of people. The activists have continued their pressures to change the law in the interest of forest dwellers and succeeded. In the last year a new legislation has come into force that provides both forest dweller and tribal rights inside all forests including national parks and sanctuaries. I believe that nearly 20 to 50 million people will engage in the rights to exploit the forests of India. This engagement is called coexistence in the new law. Strangely we have a new law but no system of governance to deal with such demand or numbers. Everybody is busy becoming a forest dweller under this law and this is especially true of both land mafias and poaching mafias. The so called intelligent activists of India fully supported and encouraged by the government of the day, have created the biggest mess possible and we all await the results. I believe the mafias will plunder the forests in the guise of tribals; genuine people will get nothing and this law will herald the end of Indias wildlife. Even in the last five years as more and more people were encouraged to enter forests in search of produce we have had much higher rates of man eating by tigers in places like Maharashtra and central India.

It was in the early 1990s that India changed her economic policies to pursue the free markets across the world and from this moment onwards we have watched our forests decline. It is a market for both rural and urban consumers. Temptations are high and greed is all prevalent and the easiest way to make a quick buck is to plunder the forests. Rough calculations indicate that the value of India's forests total to a trillion dollars at the least. Concerned people have been busy accounting for the ecological services of Indias forests. Values have been quantified for timber, carbon, fuel wood, and non-timber forest products within the forest. And not to forget the biodiversity values. New legislation has opened up a natural treasure house for looting. And it will all be under the guise of coexistence. The new Forest Rights Act has been spiced to make it a monster. Saving India's wilderness has become the toughest battle ahead. And few would doubt that a country like India without her forests would head for disaster and many project doomsday scenarios that are very real.

At the highest levels in our country we must decide how much land can be made inviolate. On this land give the people who desperately want to leave the best deal money can buy. Once people and forests are separated govern these natural areas intensively as if they were sacred sites. And with this we need to dump all our coexistence theories or cuddle the forest dweller theories out of the window. We will have to legislatively ensure that some critical wildlife landscapes remain inviolate.

India has 20% of its land mass categorized as forest land. Large areas of it are severely degraded. Much of it will start to vanish as land mafias enter the fray. But if we act now we can still save 3% of it. My focus is only on keeping this amount safe for the future. Its too late for the balance 17% which will rapidly be distributed between the mafias of city town and village and the booming corporate world. And in our efforts to save this 3% we have to dialogue across the world on a variety of issues. India needs to talk to Africa both about protection and tourism. Revenues from tourism must benefit local people across India and if we are to succeed in striking a link that is positive between the human landscape and the wildlife landscape [both separate] then and only then will we be in a position to prevent India from turning into a green desert just as large parts of Europe did in the 19th century. I would hate to see India become a land of deer and peafowl so that coexistence theories can prosper. At the moment man is rapidly converting everything into a human dominated landscape. In the last decade all the talk has been about 'rights' and stake holders and scant attention has been paid to engaging local people with the protection policing and management of the wilderness. This could have happened if intensive training had been provided to the local people. And as a strategy it is vital. In a country like India that adds 20 million to its population each year [more then the population of Australia] any rights given legally over forests can devastate regions overnight as millions will enter and rip apart pristine eco- systems. In overpopulated countries the natural world must be governed by strict laws if anything has to be saved. We will have to fight new legislations that are based on short term populist policies and attempt to capture vote banks.

We enter the most difficult moment of time on our planet. Life will get very difficult as severe shortages of water, oil, and food strike the planet and protecting natural resource will get nearly impossible. Many like me believe that human life can not exist without the natural world. To me the only way forward is to do what you can for the people on their landscapes and the best for wildlife on its and make sure both are policed in the best possible way to prevent the mafias from taking their toll on both. A well protected natural landscape is essential because of the endless services it provides for a quality of life in the human landscape. But no longer in large parts of this globe can we practically believe that both can coexist together with any harmony. That era is nearly over. In this very exploitative world that we live in top class policing of the natural landscapes will be essential to their future survival .The only debate left is how to police and who should police but police we must otherwise in a few years little will be left.