Better to act now than be sorry later
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: August 24, 2023 -

IN a significant development that could be regarded as validation of the hue and cry being made by environmental groups all these years, a group of Members of Parliament (MPs) from the Northeast recently urged the Government of India to reconsider its plan to expand oil palm cultivation in the region in view of the environmental and social risks involved.

In a joint letter submitted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the MPs belonging to different political parties and representing different states of the northeast in the Parliament made it clear that the region which is characterised by high rainfall and low temperature is climatically not suitable at all for the proposed oil palm cultivation and the government should think along the sustainable lines and have wider consultation with all stakeholders before any irreversible damage is done by going ahead with the plan under its ambitious National Mission on Edible Oils-Oil Plam (NMEOOP).

The joint letter signed by Congress MPs, namely, Pradyut Bordoloi, Abdul Khaleque, Gaurav Gogoi, all from Assam and Vincent Pala from Meghalaya, along with NPP MP Agatha Sangma (Meghalaya) and NPP MP Lorho S Pfoze from Manipur also drew the attention of the Prime Minister towards the need to focus on developing the existing dropland in the peninsular region of the country for oil palm cultivation instead of expanding area under oil palm cultivation and destroying the natural forest and jhum land in the ecologically fragile northeast region.

It is important to note here that the appeal of the MPs from the northeast to the Prime Minister for reviewing the plan to expand oil palm cultivation in the region has come at a time when the government of India is taking up steps to aggressively promote cultivation of oil palm as an option to reduce the country's dependence on edible oil imports from other countries.

With special focus on the northeast region and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, the government of India is targeting to cover an additional area of 6.5 lakh hectares under oil palm cultivation by 2025—26 from 3.5 lakh hectares under National Mission on Edible Oils - Oil Plam (NMEOOP) in 2021.

So far, the north-eastern states of Assam, Nagaland, Tripura and Manipur have signed agreements with Godrej Agrovet and Patanjali Foods allowing them to enter into contract farming in different clusters to be decided by the respective state governments, while Meghalaya has been firm on its stand against allowing oil palm cultivation on its soil considering the. general opinion against it.

Based on their empirical studies on the negative impact of oil palm cultivation that have been witnessed around the globe, various environmental groups have time and again warned that expansion of oil palm cultivation in the northeast region could have a devastating impact on its environment that would be far costlier in the long run than any possible gain one could hope from it.

As a matter of fact, Mizoram was the first state in the northeast region to allow oil palm cultivation more than 15 years ago. Without going elsewhere, one just has to look at what the cultivation of oil palm has done to the fragile ecology of that state to understand the concern of the MPs in writing to the Prime Minister for reviewing the plan for expansion of oil palm cultivation in the northeast region.

The government of Manipur, which had already entered into agreement with private companies for allowing oil palm cultivation, should also have a rethink, considering its possible impact on the environment.

As they say, it is always better to make an effort now than to be sorry afterwards.