Lesson from Wayanad
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: August 06, 2024 -

LEAVING aside the political blame game being played between the Centre and the Kerala government over the tragedy in Wayanad where multiple landslides have caused widespread devastation with previous areas of human habitation turning into bare and flattened mud grounds, one lesson all of us could learn from this tragedy is "nature does not care about human beings, if we do not take of nature".

Sometime earlier, we had spotlighted on the seriousness of loss of forest cover and degradation of environmental condition in strife-torn Manipur and appreciated the National Green Tribunal (NGT) for taking cognisance of the claims being made by the Government of Manipur regarding loss of forest cover in the state due illegal encroachment and deforestation for poppy cultivation.

Along with registering a suo moto case based on a social media post made by chief minister N Biren Singh in which he claimed with documentary evidences that the tiny northeastern Indian state had a forest cover of 17,475 sq km in 1987, but decreased to 16,598 sq km in 2021 due to illegal encroachment and rampant deforestation for growing poppy plants for extracting opium in hill areas inhabited predominantly by people of Kuki-Chin communities, a principal bench of NGT chairperson Justice Prakash Shrivastava and expert member Dr A Senthil Vel had sent notices to the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), and the Forest Survey of India (FSI).

Although the claim made by the chief minister has been contested by Kuki-Chin communities, who assert that the state government's actions are only to target them with an ulterior motive to grab their lands, we still feel that the initiative taken up by NGT was the one and only means to settle the issue of loss of forest cover due to encroachment and rampant deforestation for cultivation of poppy plants illicitly for once and all as it is closely intertwined with the ethnic tension that has been prevailing in the state for more than 15 months now.

But it is unfortunate to say that no one knows what has happened to the suo moto case after the notices were sent and the matter listed for hearing on July 31 last.

Nonetheless, seriousness of the issue should not be lost to anyone as loss of forest cover and degradation of environmental condition which has become a threat to the survival of not just the human beings but also of the entire species on this earth.

Apart from deducing the ability of forests to provide clean air and water, loss of forest cover has affected the climatic condition to such an extent that the day may not far for our planet to become unhabitable and the signs are everywhere to be missed by even the climate sceptics.

So, it is not surprising that right from Pope Francis, who, as the head of Roman Catholic Church, makes decisions on issues of faith and morality of about 1.3 billion Catholics living throughout the world; to the young Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who is at the forefront of challenging world leaders to take immediate climate mitigation actions; many people around the globe today are calling for recognising 'ecocide' as a crime.

After a panel of criminal and environmental lawyers from around the world, who are pushing for criminalizing mass damage and destruction of ecosystems, came up with the legal definition of "ecocide" in 2021 as "unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts", as many as 12 countries including Russia, France, Ukraine, Vietnam, etc., have so far criminalised ecocide, while more and more countries like Mexico, the Netherlands, Belgium, Scotland, etc., are mulling laws to make ecocide a punishable crime.

Taking cue from this global effort to combat a crime which is even more serious than genocide, perhaps, it's time for the Government of India as well to think of joining the league with due consideration of how wilful destruction of natural forests in the name of developmental projects in Wayanad, the beautiful rural district in Kerala, has led to a colossal yet preventable human tragedy.