Protecting the Eden

Participation is a lovely word. For long it has been twisted around to mean anything according to the whims and fancies of the user of the word. A recent study on participatory approaches to wildlife management currently being tried out in Africa, called Whose Eden? presents a wonderful list of nine different types of people's participation ( pp ). The simplest -- and if I may add, the most fraudulent -- approach to pp , it says, is akin to "I speak, you listen". The second approach is, "I have decided what I want to do.

Democratising a democracy

last fortnight, the French organised a mega-meeting of over 400 people, not to discuss 'Liberty, Equality and Fraternity' but 'Democracy, Governance and Sustainability'. Alain Lipietz, the French Green Party's economic ideologue, says the conference was first being organised with the provocative title of 'Is Democracy capable of managing the long-term?' The argument being that elected leaders will never take decisions that changes the present consumptive lifestyles. They would fear losing the race to those who promise a heaven stuffed with material goods.

A step backward

D Deve Gowda, the present Prime Minister ( pm ) of India, was the chief minister of Karnataka when my colleague, Supriya Akerkar, interviewed him. We were then trying to document the records of different political parties in environmental management. And Deve Gowda, deeply involved with the controversial Cogentrix power project, was extremely piqued with environmentalists. He offered a gratuitous advice to Supriya: "Often, people are being misled by environmentalists who tend to be anti-development. Take my advice...

In full gear

Last week , my eyes fell on two interesting news items placed side by side in a leading newspaper. One said that the automobile sector is growing rapidly at a rate of 26 per cent, and collaborations with foreign companies promise to push up capacities. The second said that India's petroleum products' consumption will grow in the next decade from 81 million tonnes (mt) to 150 mt.

Finding a job

alain Lipietz, an economist and a leading light in Les Verts, the French Green Party, has just finished writing a book which I am keen to read. It deals with green perspectives on the unemployment problem which today plagues a number of west European nations.

What's wrong with cheap energy?

Indians and Americans are, in some ways, very similar. For one thing, neither of them like high energy prices, regardless of the cost to sanity, society and the environment. Even as Indians were agitating against the government's hike in energy prices -- and with pre dictable results, the government partially slashed them -- the two presidential contenders in the us, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, were slanging with each other over a petrol tax of 4.3 cents per gallon. After damning Dole's demand, Clinton finally did away with the tax.

Blurred vision

At recent meeting in New York to discuss the upcoming special session of the un General Assembly in June 1997 -- which will consider the development made on the recommendations of the 1992 Rio Conference -- several environmentalists and experts expressed considerable disappointment at the lack of progress on the environmental front. The meeting was chaired by eminent Swedish environmentalist Anders Wijkman, who is currently the assistant administrator of undp .

Chink in the armour

The dynamism of Western academia never ceases to amaze me. Once an idea enters the people's mind-set, scholars of all hues begin analysing it from the standpoint of different disciplines. This is quite unlike what happens in a country like India. Gunnar Myrdal in his '60s trilogy, Asian Drama, had pointed out that corruption is an issue that figures in almost every dinner conversation and media article; yet he could hardly find any academic research on the subject. Thirty years later, the situation remains unchanged.

Saying it with pictures

My friend Paul Wapner, assistant professor of environmental politics at the American University in Washington, Dc, has just published a book, Environmental Activism and World Politics. He argues that international relations is no longer the domain of governments, as most scholars in the field continue to believe. Civil society, aided by the growing web of international communications, is increasingly exerting an influence on international relations. He cites what is, indeed, the most dramatic case in this field, namely, that of environmental activism, which

Making them responsible

We now have a new government. To those of us concerned about the environment, it is obvious that the biggest challenge before this government will be to create systems of governance that bring about a healthy balance between environment and development. With a population ready to cross a billion, and one of the poorest and most illiterate in the world, economic growth will be vital to meet its basic needs and provide jobs. But without taking care of the environment, it may only mean a little more bread for a decade or two, and a degraded, poisoned wasteland thereafter.