Of Bjorn Lomborg and Al Gore

Here is Partha Dasgupta reviewing Bjorn Lomborg's Cool It.

This review in the Financial Times has a different perspective.

The last word ought to go, for now, to Greg Mankiw.

No Two Thoughts About Reading This Book

The Omnivore's Dilemma
The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World
Michael Pollan

The dilemma, of course, is what to eat? A simple question it is not (certainly not anymore) as the author takes us on a fascinating journey following three food chains – the industrial, the pastoral organic and that of the cultivator-forager-hunter.

There is, however, a lot more than just food in the book – there is something for practically everyone to ruminate over. So there is plenty of ecology – and not only about animals but plants and fungi too. You can learn as much about grazing regimes, interdependence and evolution as you can about carbon and nitrogen cycles.

It is also about the absurdities of industrial food systems, its waste, its pollution and the cruelty to animals and the ill health it causes. Big organic (the likes of Whole Foods) comes under scrutiny and which it would seem shares many of the values if not necessarily all the inputs of industrial food. There is a discussion of animal rights, vegetarianism and much more.

So this is not really a review but a recommendation to read the book. The paperback has just been released which makes it far more affordable but as a book that will educate, amuse and make you think it is priceless.

The Many Shades of Green

Forest Futures: Global Representations And Ground Realities In The Himalayas
Antje Linkenbach

The Chipko movement in what is now Uttarakhand is widely and justly celebrated as a pioneering environmental movement to save Himalayan forests. Sorry, what did you say - an environmental movement. I thought it was a peasant movement. Wait a second - wasn’t it a feminist movement?

Now, now - these are labels that “outside” experts and professionals have given Chipko. Have you asked people what do they think of it? Do they all think of it the same way? All the time? What about the ban on tree-felling? Did people approve of it? Don’t people ever want to cut down trees? Do they never encroach on forest land? Are they content to grow crops merely for subsistence or do they have other aspirations? What about growing cash crops like apples and using fertilizers and insecticides?

If you have had 101 questions that you were afraid to ask or didn’t know who to ask here is the book for you. It will disabuse you of many myths (romantic or otherwise) and notions that have been built around the Chipko movement.

So does the real Chipko stand up? Well, maybe there is none. Like in the movie Rashomon people see events differently and there are many perspectives, rich and varied, dependent on whom you ask and what you read.

And even though this may suggest that the book dwells quite a bit on differences, rivalries and conflicts (which it does because of the very nature of the study and in any case there is no dearth of laudatory accounts), as the author emphasises Chipko is a remarkable movement both in what it did in the region and the impact it had worldwide.

The one jarring note in the book is the chapter titled Ecology and Development. The author digresses into providing the backdrop and the context to her work. However, her discussion of development theory and the Indian development debates and experience is inadequate if not actually misleading. Even the “conventional development” discourse in India is far richer than what the author suggests. The discussion in the chapter also seems superfluous to the main theme of the book.

The sections on agricultural cycle, marriage relations, history, religion and rituals of the study village necessary as they are could easily have been shortened. The relevance of the lengthy discussion and the links to the subject matter of the book is neither shown nor is it self-evident. And while the author subjects Chipko and its history to critical analysis (that is what the book is about) she accepts rather uncritically certain other aspects (e.g. the struggle for the formation of and the expectations from Uttarakhand).

These small matters notwithstanding, on the whole the book is a very useful read and addition to the literature.

Essays, essays, everywhere, not one to read

Waterscapes
The Cultural Politics of a Natural Resource
Edited by Amita Baviskar

The book comes in the midst of the flood season in India. The floods have, as usual, taken their toll of human and animal life and property. So I quickly flipped the pages to see what this book may have to say on the important subject and found a solitary article.

Rohan D’Souza’s piece is about flood control in deltaic Orissa alongside comparisons with similar schemes in the USA and China. The author points out the conflicting views on controlling floods by constructing embankments and dams and how the views swung from seeing flood waters as a calamity to seeing it as a nutrient-rich resource. The history is not quite up-do date as it stops with the 1950s. What lessons does it have for contemporary matters relating to flood control?

Precious little, one would think. Whatever may have the situation earlier matters have changed since the 1850s, from when the author traces the history. Two major changes can be pointed out. One, that nutrients to enrich soils are now increasingly supplied by artificial means and with greater effectiveness and control.

The second and the major change, however, is in the impact of floods. Urban areas and populations (both absolute and in relation to rural areas) have increased dramatically. Now urban areas don’t derive any benefits from floods but bear huge costs. Even in rural areas population densities have increased. What earlier may have been a relatively simple expedient of moving away when waters flooded homes is these days nothing short of a nightmare (even if it were simple to shift in the past it must have been a terrible experience though the author doesn’t discuss this aspect).

In contemporary India we are quite familiar with what happens when floods strike and images of people marooned and forced to spend days and nights on tree-tops under rain with scarcely any food or amenities are grim reminders of the heavy costs that people face. Even the army needs to be called in at many places to rescue people. Unfortunately, waters don’t confine themselves to farm land but enter houses and offices destroying life and damaging possessions. Not only is life at risk but even in rural areas large scale inundation is extremely disruptive of economic, social and educational activities. These days there is more infrastructure (roads, banks, schools), more material possessions (household durable goods, for example) and more equipment (tractors, pumps, engines) whose submergence is hardly an inconsequential matter.

In other words India can’t afford to have large tracts of land inundated with water every year. The author quotes a source that 12-20% of the land area of the country may be flood-prone. If true, it would imply a population at risk in such areas of 100-200 million.

So the notion of floods as a resource is now merely an academic curiosity. This, however, doesn’t and shouldn’t be construed as a plea or a case for building dams or embankments. There are other important aspects to inundation and hydrology that the author doesn’t discuss - the most prominent omission is drainage – and which are critical to understanding, regulating and preventing floods and the terrible consequences they bring.

Most of the papers in the book are not about surfeit but scarcity of water. On groundwater there are two articles – both about Gujarat and oddly enough David Hardiman’s paper relies a lot on the work of the other contributor - Navroz Dubash. Not only does it make the essays repetitive but one also misses perspectives from other states. For example, even communist-ruled West Bengal has fairly extensive groundwater markets.

Both Hardiman and Dubash are critical of and reject work claiming competitive water markets. They don’t, however, demonstrate that prices deviate from competitive outcomes but merely assert that this is so. This is clearly not sufficient.

On the other hand they do claim roles for institutional factors and historical development in water markets. Dubash makes the case that kinship and caste-based understandings play an important role in determining outcomes. Hardiman also claims that in one village (of the 2 studied by Dubash) a price cartel has been at work.

In that particular village the dominant community makes up 64% of the households and owns 97% of the land and 100% of the wells. Hence the thesis that kinship and caste play an important role is a trivial conclusion and not particularly insightful. After all given the ownership pattern is it a surprise that all decisions and outcomes will be internalised within the particular community? And if as Hardiman says they have formed a price cartel it is not clear who the cartel is exploiting or targeting. After all, the cartel is itself the market!!!!

The second village is more diverse and market forces play a greater role and caste and kinship forces seem to be weaker. The thesis thus propounded by these two authors suffers from lack of evidence and seems quite tenuous.

Overall, in the book, several important areas such as pollution, urban water scarcities, waterlogging and salinity of irrigated land are missing and while no book can be expected to be comprehensive this one has a lot of articles of questionable relevance if not questionable scholarship.

Take the editor’s own article. It reads like a diary – a travel diary – of her journey through Jhabua evaluating its watershed programme. With little else apart from her own impressions and of those she met how seriously can one consider it? And one searches in vain for something on water, and then finally the last paragraph of the paper begins “Finally, water………..”

Other essays, for example in the section entitled “Imagining Communities” are not that neglectful of water. However, and in spite of what the editor says in the introduction there is no ecological specificity about these essays. They are not water-distinctive at all, they could have been about any resource, indeed about anything. For example substitute school for the tank in Arun De Souza’s piece and it would still read right. Or if in R Brara’s it were electricity instead of water it would still ‘enlighten”. So whatever be the other merits of these essays they don’t deepen our understanding of water issues.

The redeeming feature of the book is the essay on south Indian tank irrigation by David Mosse. It questions the idea of a pre-colonial ‘ideal’ water and irrigation regime and associated conceptions and roles of the state and the community. But it doesn’t stop there. Instead it also draws implications relevant for our times and can be read as a critique of attempt to recover or recreate the past. One does miss, however, what could have been a dialogue with another contributor with different views on the subject.

The book’s jacket has a colourful water painting titled “Small Pond, Many Fish”. I wonder if the artist is alluding to the billions of humans on planet Earth. Interesting all the fish are of the same size - no small fish, no big fish - and no fish is eating other fish!!! The rest of the landscape is verdant with trees and birds and women around a handpump giving plentiful water. Has the artist not read the book or is she making a point of her own?

Don’t Go by the Title

Making Conservation Work
Securing Biodiversity in this New Century
Ghazala Shahabuddin & Mahesh Rangarajan (editors)

Reading the book’s title and sub-title made me expect papers and discussion on urgent biodiversity concerns and priorities, an analysis of existing and required changes in laws and policies, some recommendations and prescriptions, and even a few success stories pointing the way forward. And the impression was heightened when in the introduction the editors said that that most of the papers in the book were presented at a workshop looking at solutions to biodiversity loss in India.

Alas, it was not to be. The book is not about solutions or about making conservation work or securing biodiversity. Perhaps one and a half papers would qualify. Expectations of readers based on the title may well be belied.

What the book has is plenty (5 of the 8 papers) of description and analysis of what has transpired. These review papers in the volume are not even posing the problem except in a very peripheral way. Though all 8 papers are case–studies, they are not used to pose larger questions and move towards solutions even if they were to be provisional or tentative. There is no looking at the future and in particular to relate biodiversity imperatives to the rapid changes in society and the economy.

One paper that does attempt to deal with solutions is the one by Nitin Rai (readers without access to the book may read this article) on extraction of NTFPs in a Western Ghats village. He shows that secure tenure is associated with prudent harvesting while premature harvesting and other destructive practices are seen in open access areas. On the critical matter of solutions he mentions several things such as collective control and distribution based on customary rules, addressing issues of equity, role and space for local forest-dependent communities, and active role of government and non-governmental organizations.

These measures are mentioned without detailing how they would come about and be sustained. Unfortunately, the paper stops – by listing these measures - where it should have begun.

To begin with it is not clear why communities or groups are not able to organise and prevent premature harvesting which as he notes they have done at other places. What is it about the structure of society that causes this? The village has 81 households of which the dominant community is 54% (who don’t participate in collection from open-access areas) and the next two groups comprise 15% each of the total households. The average income in the village is much higher than the state and national averages and even the relatively “poor” don’t seem destitute. The district is aware, literate and no stranger to movements. Is the effort involved in modifying extraction regime not worth the reward? Or does the community need time to sort out matters?

From the paper it is not clear if collection of other products including wood and fodder in open access areas is prudent or destructive. Is it only fruit extraction, which the author studied, which is destructive of the environment?

The author leans towards providing security of tenure as a possible solution. But such security can take various forms. Which one will work? Another pertinent question not raised or addressed is that a regime change may bring about a change in behaviour. For example, secure long term access may lead people to suppress the growth of some species and promote that of others. Vegetation composition may change.

My point is that a more detailed discussion is required to take the matter forward.

For me the most fascinating paper in the book is about the pioneering restoration work on small fragmented rainforests, being done in the Anamalais, Western Ghats by the NCF. This is a real solution, albeit on a micro scale and involves working with several partners including the forest department, local people and the corporate sector. As the authors point out restoration is a neglected sphere of work. It is also quite demanding and one significant challenge would be to scale it up. There are literally thousands of such fragments in various parts of the country. It would be beyond the capacity of individual or even several NGOs to do so. So who can run the programme and how can it expand to other parts of the country? There are also large tracts of land (semi-abandoned coffee estates, for example), which exist as enclaves in the middle of forests and protected areas. They too could be restored.

Individuals and corporate houses in India have come to great riches, of late, but most of their philanthropic effort is directed at programmes on education, health and general welfare. Perhaps the time has come to start considering and debating initiatives such as purchases of conservation-important areas presently in private hands. As an example see the work of The Nature Conservancy.

While the book may not be about what the title purports nevertheless one may ask are the articles useful? Yes, several of them are and the book is not a waste of an effort but it is not what one expected.