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Afforestation
INTERVIEW: PAWAN KUMAR CHAMLING
RAWAN KUMAR CHAMUNG Do you think environmental issues are important?, No development process can exclude environmental manage- ment. I grew up amidst natural beauty. So when I see it being degraded in the name of development, I feel very disturbed. In southwest Sikkim, thereffias been large-scale deforestation. Streams are now drying up and the armhas an acute shortage of drinking water. Immediately after taking over as'No plastic bags, no landslides
Seventy-year-old Aitamai has lived in Sichey Basti on the outskirts of Gangtok for over 40 years now. "But I have never seen such a bad landslide," she says, referring to the one that devastated her house in 1996. Aitamai remembers with horror the day the otherwise-calm jhoras (rapids) that criss-cross the town washed away mountain slopes and brought life to a standstill. Aitamai blames plastic bags. -Plastic, plastic," she says, groping for words to express the enormity of the devastation that plastic bags brought to her home. TheyThe lone crusader
Issue Date: Feb 15, 1999
Born in Yamnang, a sleepy little in Sikkim's west, Chamling got involved in rehabilitation of landless people after completing school. "In fact, I donated some of my own land to settle landless people" he says, recalling his days as an activist. Transition from social work to politics came naturally, more so when the state was witnessing the movement for democracy.
CHINA
Issue Date: Dec 31, 1998
An ambitious reforestation plan has been
unveiled in China. All logging in non-commercial
woodlands will be banned
soon. State forestry bureau
director Wang Zhibao said
the plan would focus on
reforestation along the
Yangtze and Yellow rivers.
"Forests will be re-classified
into public-interest and
commercial zones," he said.
Commercial logging will be
completely banned in
regions classified public-interest, irrespective of
whether they are natural
forests or plantations.
All public-interest forests
will eventually be listed as
natural reserves, said Wang.
Logging ban
Issue Date: Oct 15, 1998
A ban on logging will be imposed in the Jinsha river basin in the Yunnan province of China. The authorities have planned to launch a reforestation drive to check floods in the future. Massive floods have wrecked havoc in China in the past few months. Earlier, a similar ban on logging was imposed in the Sichuan and Heilongjiang provinces after floods along the Yangtze and Songhua rivers claimed lives and destroyed property.
In the dumps
Issue Date: Sep 15, 1998
A PROJECT to develop green patches in the city of Ahmedabad has run into problems. The ambitious urban forestry programme, mooted by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), was started a year ago. Environmentalists say that lack of initiative by the voluntary agencies involved as well as municipal authorities is the reason behind the failure.
Green effort
Issue Date: May 31, 1998
in a bid to increase forest cover and provide employment to landless farmers, the Indian Farm Forestry Development Co-operative ( iffdc ), has put forward a proposal to the Global Environment Facility for undertaking co-operative farming for afforestation. Under the project, thousands of hectares of wasteland given to co-operative societies at the village level will be brought under forest cover. In return, the farmers will be given regular wages and will also share in the forest profits.
Mission control
When he was the irrigation minister in Madhya Pradesh, Digvijay Singh realised that big dams would only bring him unwanted unpopularity and fail to solve the problems of the largely tribal people of his state. "I realised that big dams were not going to help achieve sustainable growth," he said while speaking to Down To Earth.Rebirth of the forest
The marriage of Joint Forest Management (JFM) with watershed treatment under one mission was the touchstone for recovery of Jhabua. Even before the guidelines for watershed management were issued by the ministry of rural development, Government of India, in late 1995, the mission had commenced with the formation of 20 village forest committees (VFCs) to protect and maintain forests with the help of the forest department, in 1994.Crossing the rainbow
Issue Date: Feb 15, 1998
the ecological carnage that Jhabua has witnessed in the last five decades is sporadically mentioned in official records. Elder residents, however, remember how the dense forests once enveloped the district.
