Battle against dams building up :: HINDU

MUMBAI, May 6, 2012

Environment Ministry rejected forest clearance to Kalu dam in Thane district

While irregularities were surfacing in irrigation projects around Mumbai in early April, the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) rejected forest clearance to the Kalu dam in Murbad taluka of Thane district, which would have submerged around 1,000 hectares of forest land.

Work started last October without permission from the MOEF, and Indavi Tulpule of the Shramik Mukti Sanghatana said hundreds of trees were chopped, in blatant violation of the Forest Conservation Act. The dam didn't have approvals from the MoEF, there was no Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), or rehabilitation and resettlement plan, or a public consultation, according to a statement from the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) and the Sanghatana, both of which have been raising this issue.

Public interest litigation

It isn't Kalu alone that is fraught with irregularities. In the case of the Kondhane dam in Karjat, similar violations have been raised in a public interest litigation in the Bombay High Court, filed by Anjali Damania of India Against Corruption (IAC) and some other groups, which is coming up for hearing on May 11. Kalu is just one of the 15 or so dams coming up in the adjoining Thane and Raigad districts of Mumbai, aimed at increasing the drinking water provision in areas under the Mumbai Metropolitan Development Region Authority (MMRDA) and Navi Mumbai.

According to activists of the Shramik Mukti Sanghatana, 18 villages, with around 18,000 inhabitants, mostly tribals, would be displaced by the Kalu dam, financed by MMRDA. The FAC's rejection is based on the premise that there is ‘no respect for the laws of the land,' according to a site inspection report in January by the Regional Chief Conservator of Forests.

After the Sanghatana filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Bombay High Court, the construction on the dam was stayed in March. According to SANDRP and the Sanghatana, when the Regional Chief Conservator of Forests, Central Zone, visited the dam site, he was shocked by the extent of destruction. In his report submitted to the MoEF, he said the project proponents had no respect for the laws of the land and ‘took permissions from the MoEF for granted.' The statement said the Konkan Irrigation Development Corporation (KIDC) gave the work order to a contractor in May 2011, but submitted the proposal to the MoEF only in August 2011. In addition, KIDC grossly underestimated the number of trees to be felled, and the villages that would be affected. It didn't even consider those villages which were to be cut off by the dam.

Displacement of tribals

The FAC said “it has taken note of the complaints received regarding this dam, and also that the State government hasn't submitted any of the reports requested by the MoEF.” SANDRP said there were multiple dams coming up in the ecologically-sensitive Western Ghats around Mumbai, and a punitive measure would set an example for the remaining dams coming up too. Most of these dams have no EIA, environmental clearance, public consultations, Social Impact Assessment, or independent monitoring and scrutiny. They all displace tribals without their consent, or without any rehabilitation plans.

In March, tribals led by the Kashtakari Sanghatana took a morcha to the MMRDA offices in Bandra to oppose these dams, which were to supply water to the cities. Brian Lobo of the Sanghatana said the government must first create an efficient water distribution network, plug all leakages and misappropriation of water, and conduct a Water Audit for the entire MMRDA area. A recent report by the Paani Hakk Samiti and YUVA States that while 3,350 million litres of water is supplied to Mumbai daily, approximately 1,000 million litres is lost due to leakages, rusted pipes, or from pipes that have been sabotaged.

The Sanghatana opposed dams to provide water to the entire area falling under the MMRDA, including the Municipal areas of Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan-Dombivli, Ulhasnagar, New Mumbai, Vasai-Virar, Mira-Bhayandar, and called for immediate cancellation of the Kalu, Susari, Shai and Balganga dams.

For the past hundred years, dams, which have been constructed in the rural areas of Thane and Raigad districts to supply water to Mumbai, destroyed the lives and livelihoods of Adivasis and farmers, the Sanghatana said. It criticised the “skewed policies of the government, which displaced Adivasis while providing the mega-cities of Mumbai-Thane and its suburbs with an uninterrupted supply of water from these dams.”

farmer’s seed supply is eroded and he becomes dependent on patented GM seed, the result is debt

The seed emergency ::

• Vandana Shiva

  Dr Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist, and eco feminist. She serves as the executive director of the Navdanya Trust.
  
  

• January 31, 2012 :: 
Deccan chronicle

Seed is the first link in the food chain, and seed sovereignty is the foundation of food sovereignty. If farmers do not have their own seed or access to open pollinated varieties that they can save, improve, exchange, they have no seed sovereignty and consequently no food sovereignty.

The deepening agrarian and food crisis has its roots in changes in the seed supply system, brought on by the erosion of seed diversity and the farmer’s loss of rights to seed. These rights include the right to save, breed and exchange seed, to have access to diverse open-source seeds which are not patented, genetically modified, owned and controlled by giant corporations. There is an urgent need to reclaim the seed and biodiversity in the food chain as commons.

The last 20 years have seen the concentration of the control over seed by a very small number of giant corporations. In 1995, when the UN organised the Plant Genetic Resources Confe-rence in Leipzig, it was reported that 75 per cent of all agricultural biodiversity had disappeared because of the introduction of “modern” varieties. Since then, the erosion of seed diversity and the farmer’s right have been rapid. The introduction of the Trade Related Intellectual Pro-perty Rights Agreement (TRIPs) of WTO has accelerated the spread of genetically engineered seed which can be patented, and for which royalties can be collected.

Navdanya was brought into being in response to the introduction of patents on seed in the TRIPs under GATT about which a representative of Monsanto, a leading GM seed corporation, later said, “In drafting these agreements we were the patient diagnostician, physician all in one.” Corporations defined a problem and for them the problem was farmers saving the seed. They offered a solution, and the solution was to make it illegal for farmers to save seeds by introducing patents and intellectual property rights on seed. As a result, acreage under GM corn, soya, canola and cotton has dramatically increased across the world.

Besides destroying diversity, patented GM seeds are also undermining seed sovereignty. Across the world, new seed laws are being made which enforce compulsory registration of seed, thus making it impossible for small farmers to grow their own diversity, and forcing them into dependency on giant seed corporations. Corporations are patenting climate-resilient seeds evolved by farmers, thus robbing farmers of their right to use their own seeds and knowledge for climate adaptation.

Another threat is genetic contamination of the seed. India has lost its cottonseeds because of contamination from Bt Cotton. Canada has lost its canola seed because of contamination from Roundup Ready canola. Mexico has lost its corn because of contamination from GM corn.

After contamination, Biotech Seed Corporation sues farmers with patent infringement cases, as happened in the case of Percy Schmeiser, a farmer from Bruno in Canada. That is why more than 80 groups came together and filed a case to prevent Monsanto from suing farmers whose seeds had been contaminated.

As the farmer’s seed supply is eroded and he becomes dependent on patented GM seed, the result is debt. India, the home of cotton, has lost its cottonseed diversity and cottonseed sovereignty. Ninety-five per cent of cottonseed is now Monsanto’s Bt. Cotton, and the debt trap created by being forced to buy seed every year, with royalty payments, has pushed hundreds of thousands of farmers to suicide, of the 250,000 cases of farmers suicide, the majority are in the cotton belt.

Even as the disappearance of biodiversity and seed sovereignty creates a major crisis for agriculture and food security, corporations are pushing governments to use public money to destroy the public seed supply and replace it with unreliable non-renewable, patented seed which must be bought every year.

In Europe, the 1994 regulation for protection of plant varieties, forced farmers to make a “compulsory voluntary contribution” to seed companies. The terms themselves are contradictory. What is compulsory cannot be voluntary.

In France, a law was passed in November 2011, which makes royalty payments compulsory. As agriculture minister Bruna Le Marie said, “Seeds can no longer be royalty free, as is currently the case.” Of the 5,000 or so cultivated plant varieties, 600 are protected by certificate in France, and these account for 99 per cent of the varieties grown by farmers.

The “compulsory voluntary contribution”, in other words a royalty, is justified on grounds that “a fee is paid to certificate holders (seed companies) to sustain funding of research and efforts to improve genetic resources”.

As Monsanto states “it draws from a collection of germ-plasma that is unparalleled in history” and “mines the diversity in this genetic library to develop elite seeds faster than ever before”. In effect what Monsanto is doing is enclosure of the genetic commons of our biodiversity and the intellectual commons of public breeding by farming communities and public institutions. And what the seed corporation is offering is not “improvement” of genetic resources, but their degradation. Similarly, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa being pushed by the Gates Foundation is a major assault on Africa’s seed sovereignty.

Agribusiness is the only sector in which the US has a positive trade balance, with GM seeds bringing hefty royalties to the US. These royalties are translating into debt traps and suicide for farmers and disappearance of biodiversity worldwide.

Under the US Global Food Security Act, Nepal signed an agreement with USAID and Monsanto. This led to massive protests across the country. India was forced to allow patents on seed through the first dispute brought by the US against India in the WTO. Since 2004, India has also been trying to introduce a Seed Act, which would require farmers to register their own seed and take licences. This, in effect, would prevent farmers from using their indigenous seed varieties. By launching a Seed Satyagraha, handing over hundreds of thousands of signatures to the Prime Minister and working with Parliament, we have so far prevented the Seed Law from being introduced.

India has signed a US-India Agricultural Knowledge Initiative, with Monsanto on the board. States are being pressured to sign agreements with Monsanto. In its MoU signed with the Rajasthan government, Monsanto would get intellectual property rights on all genetic resources and research on seeds coming under the MoU. It took a campaign by Navdanya and a Bija Yatra with the slogan “Monsanto Quit India” to get the government of Rajasthan to cancel the MoU.

The pressure of Monsanto on the US government and the joint pressure of both on the governments across the world is a major threat to the future of seed, the future of food and the future of democracy in these vital spheres of life.

The writer is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust