| karmapa |
Posted
on 04-Sep-03 09:47 PM
[Note this rejoinder to the Himalayan Times editorial was rejected. So much for healthy debate in Nepali press.]
Paleo-Conservationists Are Back!
The Himalayan Times editorial of Sept. 4, Poaching of poachers, applauds the punishment meted out to the three prajas ('Chepangs') involved in killing rhinos, which I think is unwarranted. This is like applying a small band-aid to a large open wound: futile. The prajas and their ilk are not the real poachers. If you want to poach the real poachers, better go after the real source of demand for rhino horns: the international smuggling ring in cahoots with the powers-that-be in Kathmandu. Be warned that you may be poached instead. So imprisoning three people, that, too, of economically backward Chepang ethnicity, most of whom are citizenship-less in their own native land and totally marginalized and who have clueless as to what they are getting into here, is no conservation. They are merely pawns in the game. The countrys state machineries work to punish the small fries and let go off the bigger fishes. Tell me, where is justice in that? Not alleviate poverty but eliminate the poor is the dangerous message the State is sending out.
The editorial further hints that conservation in Nepal has gone high tech, citing WWF-Nepals powerboat vigil. From this, I conclude that paleo-conservatives are back and have taken over conservation in Nepal. Because, see, all they are interested in is number-crunching: showing donors oh we have this many rhinos today as opposed to X years ago, and we are doing great work. Paleo-conservationists merely apply technical solutions to problems of conservation without paying attention to the socio-economic realities on the ground. Anything that comes in the way of the increasing number is going to be punished, without addressing the real root cause, which is, more often than not, socio-economic in nature. For example, no one, certainly, not WWF-Nepal or any other conservation-related agencies, raised so much as a squeal when the RNA killed the villagers buffaloes when the latter strayed into the Bardia Natl Park. One-two buffaloes are all that the families in the far West, where the average landholding per family is the lowest in all of Nepal, have. Empathy and sympathy for the poor, which is what needs conserving in this poor country, has gone the way of the Dodo. Also the governments decision to levy a 40% tax to the community forestry user groups on sale of timber to outsiders is nothing more than a puppet government flexing its muscle, taking advantage of the countrys current situation.
If paleo-conservationists who are in ascendancy in Nepal today are to have their way, pretty soon the number of Kusundas and Rautes both endangered indigenous groupswill become extinct. We will be left with celebrating the comeback of rhinos when their number hits the 1000-mark. Can anybody tell me what is wrong with this picture?
The truth is Nepali government and its development sector have consistently failed to put marginalized local people at the center of conservation or development.
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