The problem

MAKING space for nature in India today is no easy task. For a start, we have twice as many people now than we did four decades ago. Since 1990, our economy has been the second fastest growing in the world. And our socio-cultural milieu and political landscape is in a state of considerable flux.

Traditionally, discussions about the conservation of nature, in particular of wildlife, have gravitated towards nature reserves. Several national parks and tiger reserves, elephant reserves and wildlife sanctuaries have been established or expanded since the early 1970s. The strategy was simple. Spaces on land and water of intrinsic ecological worth were delineated; protection was made the explicit management priority. Preservation was privileged as the way to safeguard ecological integrity. Competing social, economic or cultural claims were shut out by law and executive fiat. Much of conservation then has been about the vigorous defence of these reserves and their protection from any activity that might compromise wildlife and nature.

The limitations of this approach are self-evident. Vital as they are for heritage and science, such reserves not only cover a mere five per cent of the country’s landscape, they do not exist in ecological or economic isolation from a wider matrix.

Animals and birds, water and wind do not obey the boundaries people draw. Often, a park’s wildlife population can be imperilled by what happens beyond its borders. The catastrophic population crash of common vulture species, first documented in Bharatpur’s wetlands, had its origins in the changing practice of veterinary medicine across India. Tigers or elephants may be marooned in small reserves as mega-development projects cut off corridors that animals can now walk across. Reserves with sharp boundaries hold even less meaning in arid or montane landscapes where species share their ranges with resident human communities. Even in urban spaces, remnant nature can persist, both in form and substance. As for rivers and the sea, the vitality of the larger waterscape hinges on much more than policing the extraction of biomass.

If nature’s processes span borders, so too do the webs of human actions. The creation of wealth and waste, the movement of goods and people, all combine to limit, if not totally undermine, the value of enclave-centred conservation.

Make no mistake. Reserves are not passe, and still need priority. Preservation remains a valid and worthwhile ideal to strive for. The larger projects of cleaner air and water, sustainable farming and eco-friendly urban spaces will gain immeasurably from safety sites where we can learn about the workings of nature. But the matrix requires active intervention, care and thought. The reserves and the larger landscape milieu are different parts of a spectrum that complement each other. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that nature reserves are in crisis for reasons well beyond the circumstances responsible for their insular character. Often, the reserves are contested spaces and the present model that tries to render them inviolate works, but only fitfully.

The complex of parks in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve is a case in point. A hundred and fifty thousand people have relied on Bandipur alone for firewood. Over a hundred thousand cattle graze in it every day. For those eking out modest livelihoods, energy and cash are vital for sustenance, and the forest is a source of both. If the parks do sustain the people, the harvest of fuelwood and fodder also undermines its fragile ecology. Conversely, animals like elephants and wild pigs raid crops in the adjoining farmlands, while cattle vie with wild ruminants for fodder in the reserve’s forests. Most conservation efforts here, as elsewhere, are directly in conflict with the survival needs of such farming communities. Increasingly able to assert their rights, and as active voters, they cannot be stopped from regular ingress in the park. It’s a fragile balancing act. The park as an entity survives and the livelihoods do too, but the idea of a strict nature reserve is realized only in part. To add to pressures, large infrastructure projects in the greater Nilgiris remain a major issue that threaten to slice up this contiguous forest tract.

There are indeed ways to intervene that alleviate distress. Efforts to facilitate alternate energy and evolve better farmer-maintained fencing address some of the issues in an innovative way, take the sharp edge off conflict. Perhaps, if extended more widely, they can do more than just buy time. They can create or secure conservation spaces via cooperation, widening the constituency for conservation beyond those who make gains (or limit losses) arising from protection. And such efforts outside the parks are as integral to making space for nature as creating parks in the first place.

But as argued above, the larger ecological and economic fabric is under strain and can do with more than just tending fences at the forest edge. It may defy commonly-held premises, but recent ecological and social research shows that significant spaces for nature continue to remain outside reserve boundaries. This is true even for charismatic vertebrates such as Asian elephants, and even more so for biomes like wetlands, dry savannah and scrub jungles. An obsession with reserves alone may do these species and habitats grave injustice. For many smaller taxa, habitats outside reserves can often be far more crucial than what may be found inside them.

Policy and practice vis-à-vis the lands and waters outside reserves still has crucial implications for conservation. Yet, we cannot overlook the fact that outside reserve boundaries, economic, social and cultural demands will take priority. Thus, on the ground, it is often difficult to view the reserve boundary as a line that clearly separates conservation opportunity from conservation threat.

Just as conservation must grapple with the serious challenges within reserve boundaries, it must equally embrace the opportunities outside them. To accomplish such a metaphorical blurring of the reserve boundary, we must first transcend the more entrenched ideological boundaries as well. If nature spills beyond borders, thought, policy and action too must follow suit. This is not a prescription to let go of nature reserves. We would contend against a ‘let us forget nature reserves’ stance with all the emphasis at our command. But conservation, whether protection or ecological restoration, cannot stop at reserve boundaries. Nor can it treat the wider matrix as orphaned ecological space.

Such a wider platform for ecology is easy to speak about but harder to create or sustain. Like any other school of thought, the conservation community too is riven across many ideological lines. Biocentric ideologies of preserving nature are locked in contest with anthropocentric ideas of using nature. Some focus on small species or reserves as worthwhile and others remain focused on big animals and landscapes to play an umbrella or flagship role. Captive breeding and ex-situ means of conservation vie with the needs of protecting species in-situ. Some leverage emerging markets for conservation; others favour a systematic delinking of nature from markets. Some see inclusive, democratic processes that involve a cross-section of society as anchor; others yearn for an earlier age when power and wealth were concentrated with a few, and conservation rolled out quickly.

Conservation practitioners have defied all manner of typecasting and continue to adopt a melange of shifting positions. They have cut the cloth to the occasion. Like any crisis-driven response, conservation has often involved on-the-spot responses with the theory later playing catch-up. Many sharp edges in conservation arise from the novelty of the conservation enterprise itself. Managing runaway growth to minimize long-term negative impacts on ecology in a disparate society is hard enough. With so many voices, many strident and each more vocal with time, the task becomes even more complex.

To rethink conservation is to reorder our ideas about nature as much as society. To use Deng Xiao Peng’s phrase, it is about crossing the river while feeling the stones. The journey must not be broken but has to negotiate the hidden, real life obstacles. For conservation, the crossing has to be in the mind and heart as much as by how the feet walk the river bed. Ethics and economics have to blend with ecology. The structures and functions of nature do matter, but so too do the ways in which institutions work or cultures change.

These newer engagements complement older approaches. How can one advance nature friendly agendas on a wider social and ecological canvas? This requires engagement not only with protection but production, not only ‘inviolate spaces’ but also human settlements. Often, they try to go beyond small nuclei of the middle class, bureaucracy and science to reach out to larger political constituencies. There are intimations of change not only in citizen groups and academia, but also in government.

Conservation in practice has to tie in with wider secular trends that combine ecological sanity with justice, a space for nature with one for livelihoods. There are working approaches with different and often more effective ways of drawing on knowledge and institutions, processes and practices to create more not less space for nature. But for that we need to think afresh and create anew. Nature without borders is not just about more of the same. It is about some of the new.

M.D. MADHUSUDAN and MAHESH RANGARAJAN