I am not sure if anyone else can rival me in Bhutan – in the number of blog posts. As of today, including this post, statistics show that my Blog has a staggering 903 articles!
In truth the number does not matter – what matters is the quality of readers that a blog attracts. Over the years, there have been some seriously intense readers who have left some brilliant comments on a number of my posts - comments that are more substantive than the post itself. In honoring one of them, I reproduce below a reader’s comments on my blog on the subject surrounding the construction of the very illegal and environmentally disastrous Shingkhar-Gorgan road.
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Anonymous
September 22, 2011 at 9:45 PM
Talk about MPs playing politics. Any construction in the core zone of the national park is in violation of the Forest & Nature Conservation Act. Where is due process of law here? The procedure is illegal, yet no MP wants to raise it because they want to appease the vote banks in Lhuentse. Quite a different response from the MPs than with the Tobacco Control Act incident, right? BUT, why the difference, if not politics? It is not OK to violate an Act when it suits them, and then they will look the other way if doesn't suit their needs. Rubbish!
Poverty alleviation of our people should certainly be a priority, but at what cost? And will this really be achieved by this 'farm road'? One can debate it either way. With a road comes shops, workers' camps and other settlement that will eat into the otherwise pristine forest (frankly 'pristine forests' are very less in Bhutan - there's cattle and human disturbance everywhere). The more you infiltrate into wildlife habitat, the more conflicts with wildlife you should expect. Then we will lament about poverty alleviation again when tigers and wild dogs kill cattle.
What is with the PM's claim that there is insufficient data that this place is biologically important. Who does he need to hear it from, a foreign expert, a McKinsey consultant, the BBC, or will he have some faith in the Bhutanese for a change? Again, go on, build a lousy road with questionable benefit if that is what you think will get you more votes, but PLEASE don't tell the world that the government cares about the environment. This is not a ploy to be used as you please, let's just be true to ourselves. Let's do away with all parks and reserves, then, what is the point? I find the carbon emission reduction argument equally hilarious. Here the problem is intrusion into the core zone of a national park, not global warming. They are equally important concerns, but different. Even if the road does reduce carbon emission as a result (as claimed by supporters) it does not solve the issue of intrusion into prime tiger habitat AND violation of a national Act.
There's a rumor that the Agriculture minister threatened to resign if the road went ahead as planned - I heard this from a credible senior official. I would believe this to be true - he is a man with integrity. What we need for poverty alleviation is innovation, not a lame-ass excuse of a road with a questionable future. Tourism should come as people coming on luxury treks from Ura to Lhuntse, knowing that they are hiking or riding horses in tiger territory, or on well planned birding trips, homestays involving locals, not Thimphu elites. A bad road will only allow people from Thimphu and those with expensive cars to reach Lhuntse faster. How this will alleviate poverty is to be seen. Bhutan's innovation has stopped at hydropower and roads. We need a new cabinet, seriously. Away with the old ministers who have been around forever. Seriously.
The highway downgrading to a farm road may be indication of the government rescinding or retracting from the earlier, more adamant stand. That may be a good sign, BUT this is only the beginning, we need a good precedence. Democracy should involve all stakeholders - the government alone does not represent Bhutan.
Shingkhar-Gorgan Road (Comment AAA)
ReplyDeleteI know people are divided between Yes and No to the Shingkhar-Gorgan Road. The Government and local people want the road to alleviate poverty of the people in the frontier region. But it is a No from the environmentalists group saying that it would cause great harm to the environment and that it goes against the existing laws. I have for a long time been trying to make sense of the claims by the Green camp, their validity and relevance. My conclusion is that the Green claims are more emotional than rational, and more old beliefs rooted in colonialism than top of the science.
Law
The Forest Act 1995, the law for the Parks, neither states any activity permitted or prohibited in a National Park nor it does it mention the term, ‘core zone’. It leaves it to the Ministry to draft rules to regulate/prohibit activities within a Protected Area, and to the Department of Forests to write a management plan for each Protected Area.
According to the Forest Rules 2006, all human activities such as construction, including motor roads, buildings, fences, or any physical structures, settlements and cultivation, grazing and firewood collection within any protected area are prohibited. However, these human activities even if they are inside a core zone will be permitted following the determination that the activity is necessary to accomplish the objectives of nature conservation and the conservation of the protected area.
The Green camp has based its defense on the first rule which says that there shall be no people, no farming, no villages and no infrastructure development inside a Park. But the rule cannot be complied as it is not practical for the very fact that the protected area network encompasses over 50% of the country which means we have thus been systematically breaking the forest rule. The second rule says that if a determination is made that a particular human activity is good for environment, permission can be granted for that activity. The Green camp has unnecessarily singled out Shingkhar-Gorgan Road proposal for attack.
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ReplyDeleteManagement Plan
Every National Park is required by the Forest Act 1995 to have a management plan. The management plan therefore is the most important document as it sets out to take stock of current and emerging issues and challenges, and to establish goals and objectives for the Park.
The proposed Shingkhar-Gorgan Road was something not out of the blue that happened in 2011. The Park had envisioned the Government’s plan of three highways passing through it some five years before. They were the Shingkhar-Gorgan, Zhemgang to Ura and Zhemgang to Lingmethang roads. And, there is already a portion of the East-West Highway inside the Park. When the Park assessed the impact of road on environment, it did not find a clear negative impact associated with roads. It further said that if the Government notified the Park in advance, it would undertake species research and suggest mitigation measures. The Management Plan approved in 2008 was forthcoming, not adverse to the idea of roads.
Core Zone
A core zone is generally defined as the area with abundant wildlife and no human influence, thus sacrosanct. The Green camp has said that the Park’s core zone is an important tiger habitat and it thus evoked this ‘sacrosanct’ core zone imagery to dramatic effect warning that a road passing through the core zone of a national park would damage Bhutan’s reputation as ‘global conservation leader’. But when the tiger signs and sightings map for the Park is superimposed over the Park’s zonation, the tigers were reported mostly from the human settlement zones, outside the core zones. It is important to bear in mind that a tiger is territorial traveling 10 to 30 kms a day in search of food and it is a habitat generalist requiring grasslands, open forest and closed forest. The Park has not one large single contiguous core zone but over 10 small islands of core zones. It says that only 8% of the total area is estimated as pristine.
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ReplyDeleteRoads Lift People Out of Poverty in Frontier Regions
Studies show that among government infrastructure projects, rural roads forge social integration, yield many benefits for the economy, enhances economic efficiency, most of all they are found to have the largest impact on poverty incidence through agricultural productivity and non-farm employment.
Bhutan has been building roads since 1960s and has today over 12,000 km of road network. There is thus considerable experience with the design and implementation of roads in ecologically sensitive areas. And, Bhutan has the lowest road density in South Asia, 21.8 km per 100 km2 compared to Nepal’s 47, India’s 112 and Bangladesh’s 166. Research also shows that many ecological effects of roads are spatially small with impacts mostly occurring at the road-segment level, which includes the road and roadside.
Shingkhar-Gorgan Road is certainly a case of going little overboard by the Green camp. Road is an environmentally low impact and socially beneficial activity for people being proposed in the Park, not high environmental impact activity like industrial enterprise or mining.
The Concept of Park Has Evolved But Bhutan Has Remained Trapped
The origin of National Park is rooted in colonialism. The colonialists forcibly removed indigenous people from beautiful scenic and wildlife rich areas and set aside the same area for their pleasures and enjoyment of nature. They instituted ‘fence and fine’ system for the local people. Realizing the historical injustice, the concept of park has involved to make local people the centre of Park policy and management. Research shows the scenic beauty of landscapes and rich wildlife are results of generations of local peoples’ interactions with nature.
Excessive Green is bad for Green itself and economy.
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