I was working for World Widlife Fund in Switzerland, and I was asked to show an Indian visitor the sights. More than a few heads turned as Sunderlal Bahuguna, slight, much-bearded, wearing a colorless woolen homespun robe a la Mahatma Gandhi, embraced a several-hundred year-old oak tree near the Chateau de Nyon. In his deep Indian accent he explained how the women of northern India had started Chipko in order to protest against the deforestation that was threatening their livelihood. Bahuguna, a seemingly humble man, whose 5,000-kilometer trans-Himalayan footmarch and appeal to then-prime minister Indira Gandhi resulted in a ban on tree-felling, was visiting Switzerland to seek international support to stop the Tehri dam in the Himalayan region. Bahuguna claimed that people “butcher the earth”, and he railed against “suicidal activities being carried out in the name of development.” He gave me a new perspective on nature conservation, introducing me to the power of emotional, culturally-specific campaigns enacted by the people most affected by environmental damage. At the same time, I wondered why the international face of a woman’s movement was that of a man.
As I reminisced about my favorable impressions of Bahaguna, who had introduced me to such tantalizing concepts, Srimati interrupted me.
“Sunderlal Bahuguna is a thief,” she exclaimed. Taken aback by such voluble emotion from a pleasant Asian woman I had just met, I asked her to explain her accusation. “Sunderlal Bahuguna was a contractor who cut the trees and made a lot of money,” she explained. “After he made a lot of money he claimed he had a change of heart and declared he was part of the movement.”
Obviously passions run high when trees meet politics.
When I visited Reni village Srimati Bali Devi Rana had just returned from Nairobi, to receive a UNEP award and speak at an international conservation conference, sharing the stage with Kenyan Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai. It was the first trip outside India for the 57-year-old woman, a voyage no doubt made more than a little challenging since she speaks no English. I pointed out that Chipko is famous around the world. Did that make her proud?
Not particularly, she decided. “Lots of learned people come here to write scholarly papers about our idyllic life,” she said, “but they live in cities that are dirty.” She thought a moment. “We don’t write our literature. Our literature is the mountains, the jungles, the animals and holy spirits. People come to see our literature.”
Chapter 4
“NO TO POISON” SAY PHILIPPINES FISHERMEN
How were your aquarium fish caught?
BATASAN ISLAND, Tubigon, Philippines
Resembling a sub-marine butterfly collector, Tito Sitoy takes a breath, dives a couple of meters to a coral reef and spots his prey. He deftly scoops a finger-long maroon clown fish into his net, swims to the surface and transfers the fish into a clear plastic jar.
The fish will embark on a journey halfway across the globe that will probably end in one of the estimated two million United States home aquariums.
Because he caught this fish without cyanide and without damaging the reef, Mr. Sitoy will earn almost three times as much for this fish than he did a few months ago.
Tito Sitoy participates in one end of a sustainable supply-demand chain, set up by Hawaii-based Marine Aquarium Council (MAC) that seeks to help small-scale fishermen make more money, protect fragile and threatened coral reefs, and provide healthier fish for hobbyists. This is a big market – the global trade in marine aquarium organisms is estimated by MAC to run at several hundred million dollars annually. The Philippines and Indonesia together account for approximately 80 percent of the world’s aquarium fish trade.
The world’s coral reefs could certainly use some effective conservation initiatives. In the Philippines, for instance, some 95 percent of the coral reefs are damaged or destroyed. Experts believe that many of the earth’s remaining reefs may be dead in 20 years.
There are numerous causes of coral reef destruction. Some are global, such as climate change. But it is the fishermen themselves, who rely on these “rainforests of the sea” for their livelihoods, who batter coral reefs through bomb fishing and cyanide use.
I’ve dived in many countries in Southeast Asia and heard the frightening explosions of homemade bombs. I’ve seen once-vibrant reefs dying because fishermen squirted poisons on to these fragile ecosystems – more than a million kilograms of cyanide have been sprayed onto Philippine reefs, according to International Marinelife Alliance.
Philippine divers for both live food fish (supplied to restaurants in Asia) and aquarium fish are estimated to use about 150,000 kilomgrams of cyanide yearly. The poison stuns the fish, sometimes even killing them outright. Worse, since coral polyps cannot move, they too are often killed, along their symbiotic algae that give corals their exuberant colors. The reefs, which are the breeding grounds for fish and other creatures, are poisoned, turn white and lifeless.
Paul Holthus, executive director of MAC, wants to stop the damaging use of cyanide by which many of the 35 million wild-caught tropical ornamental fish are captured annually.
“MAC is the first system to define, identify and verify environmentally sound practices and products in this industry,” he says. “We are also labeling these products so that the consumers can reward those who are responsible.”
His objective is to “forge a reliable chain of custody in which fish are handled appropriately at each step of the trade route, from reef to retailer.”
Will it succeed?
Jerry Bisson, of USAID in Manila, an early MAC-supporter, observes: “In the MAC scenario we can alleviate poverty by helping these fishermen run a profitable business; and they can maintain that business by securing a healthy habitat.”
Nevertheless, a number of vocal critics feel that MAC’s operations in the Philippines, the first country where the group is active, do not live up to the organization’s ambitious goals.
Josef Steiger, an aquarium fish importer in Basel, Switzerland, agrees with MAC’s objectives but strongly disagrees with its practice, saying “What MAC is doing in the Philippines now is criminal and immoral.” Accusing MAC of “greenwashing”, Steiger protests that MAC encourages certified exporters to mix “clean” fish with cyanide-caught fish and that there are too many certified exporters for the amount of cyanide-free fish that are caught.
“We have just certified the first community, in Batasan – two other communities were evaluated simultaneously with Batasan but did not pass the certification process,” Holthus counters. “And the certification process is designed to trace shipments of certified fish throughout the chain. Exporters have the responsibility to keep the certified and non-certified fish segregated.”
Peter Rubec, a scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission argues that MAC refuses to endorse the use of a standard test to detect cyanide, Holthus argues that Rubec’s cyanide detection process has never been peer-reviewed and has not passed scientific scrutiny.
Will MAC controls be sufficient to stop cyanide use?
“I was using cyanide,” Tito Sitoy confesses without much emotion, like a clear-headed member of a 12-step rehabilitation program. Had Sitoy been caught (which is not at all certain given the inability of Philippines police to cover a country of 7,000 islands), he would, in theory, have faced a sentence of 5-10 years in prison.
I remember watching Sitoy dive on the broken coral and sea grass. He cuts an incongruous figure, dressed in a black and white wool ski cap, swimming with fins made of plywood with foot straps crafted from old tires. He calmly chases a multi-colored fish, scoops it into his net, places it in a jar, and dives in search of another. This is his job, not an emotional crusade.
Nevertheless, Tito Sitoy had tears in his eyes during an October 2002 ceremony when he became one of the first 27 people in the world to receive their MAC certification cards.
Did his happiness result from pride or economic optimism?
The afternoon before the graduation I watch as he queues with other fisherman to give
their daily catch to Epi Saavedra, the village-appointed business manager. Mr. Saavedra, sitting on a floating holding pen dubbed “Wall Street” by the fishermen, examines Mr. Sitoy’s catch. “Maroon clown,” Saavedra says, while an assistant records the day’s catch in a notebook. “Tomato clown. Red angelfish. Cleaner wrasse. Chelmon butterfly. Green mandarin.” A year ago, when the fish would probably have been caught with cyanide, the common tomato clown might have earned Sitoy US$0.75. Today the business manager credits Sitoy’s account with US$2.50 for the healthy crimson fish.
Chapter 5
GOD’S OWN PHARMACIES
Asia’s sacred groves survive because they provide spiritual and practical benefits; with thanks to a flying monkey god
KERALA, India
Who has the answers to conservation conundrums? Goverments with their laws, or local people with their traditions?
As a conservationist I have spent years encouraging governments to establish protected areas through legislation. Unfortunately, many modern conservation areas fail because they don’t have community support. A classic example is the system of Project Tiger reserves in India, several of which are, according to Madhav Gadgil of the Indian Institute of Science, “threatened by discontented local tribal people.” Local communities argue that the Delhi-based conservation-wallahs value animals more highly than they do people.
Recognizing that externally-imposed protected areas can only work when local people support the concept, many people in the conservation movement see the need to encourage rural communities to respect reserve boundaries. More importantly (and infinitely more difficult), we Europe-based conservation-wallahs try to figure out ways to give villagers that vague concept called “community empowerment”, a phrase which is a current buzzword among western conservationists. Unfortunately, as noble as it sounds, “community empowerment” still smacks of outside influence which is, justifiably, resented by many people in the developing world.
I find it ironic that some of the most successful Asian conservation programs have, in many cases, already cut out the middle man – in this case the government. Sacred groves, or “life reserves”, as one Indian villager describes them, survive today without benefit of government gazettement, without government nature wardens, without government education centres and sometimes even without government goodwill. Primarily Hindu or Buddhist-oriented, sacred groves flourish because they serve people’s physical and spiritual needs. Unlike the current view of “empowerment”, which often means that the people who really hold the power grudgingly give up a tiny slice to their poorer cousins, sacred groves reflect a refreshing view of nature for the people, by the people.
I first noticed the sacred grove at Perumbavoor, an hour east of Cochin in the south Indian state of Kerala, as a hazy green mound perhaps two kilometers distant. I stood on a busy road, where traffic blew exhaust fumes past the offices of Decent Cargo Movers, the Ruby Coold [sic] Bar and Creative Computer Services, whose sign announced: “Kick off your headache, we got the solution.”
The entrance to the forest itself is at the end of a makeshift cricket pitch, brown with dust and abuse. The air cleared as I entered the ten-hectare sacred grove, which is one of the last remnants of virgin forest outside the national park network. Birdsong replaces motorcycle squeal.
I went there with Forest Range Officer N.C. Induchoodan, who pointed out medicinal plants in the grove that are used in Ayurvedic medicine to treat diabetes and asthma, fevers and hypertension, malaria and infections. He described these forest drugstores as “God’s own pharmacies.”
How could a chunk of tropical rainforest survive in one of the most densely populated corners of one of the most densely populated countries in the world?
The answer depends on whether you ask the question from a western or an Asian perspective.
Using Cartesian, logical analysis, one might conclude that sacred groves exist because they form important watersheds, they provide breeding ground and shelter for wildlife, they are situated on ancient trade routes or historic settlements, they provide timber for rebuilding in the event a castrophic fire destroys a village and, of course, because they contain medicinal plants.
However there are other factors at work, some of which force a western mind to perform mental acrobatics.
“Three thousand years ago this whole region was forested,” observes Mr. M. Prakash, the priest of the Perumbavoor temple and a devotee of Durga, Siva’s consort and a supreme goddess who reigns in the grove. “Inside the temple – no, you can’t go in there – is a stone that people say is in the image of Durga. This stone miraculously bled when some women who were cutting grass accidentally hit it with their sickles. From that day the women worshipped the rock, and people believe that the trees here are the hair of the goddess. Nobody has disturbed this area since, since cutting the trees is the same as hacking the body of Durga.”
What should one make of this? I asked Mr. V. Rajendran, a newspaper agent who worships almost daily in the Perumbavoor grove, what might happen to someone who upsets Durga, an ancient incarnation of the Earth Mother Goddess, the consort of Lord Shiva, who also appears in Hindu mythology as Parvati or Kali.
He had an anecdote ready, almost as if he had been waiting his entire life for a strange foreigner to march into his holy forest and ask this question. We sat on a fallen metre-diameter tree trunk. Mr. Rajendran added that several years ago a man collected from the grove, without permission from the priest, seeds of the medicinal plant Vateria indica, used for treating chronic rheumatism and numerous other disorders. For ten years following his trespass the man was plagued by financial, medical and personal problems. Perhaps even more disturbing, after his intrusion the Vateria indica bushes in the grove refused to flower. The man ultimately repented by offering the goddess an amount of gold equivalent to the weight of the seeds he had stolen. Durga was appeased and nature’s balance was restored.
The origin of most sacred groves is lost in time. I asked Vithal Rajan, chairman of the central Indian Deccan Development Society and formerly director of education and ethics for WWF International, how they might have started. “You find sacred places everywhere,” he explained. “Stonehenge, the Aboriginal songlines. They’re the meeting place of culture and nature.”
I am what I think. My grown-up western mind insists on asking “why?” Life would be so much simpler if I simply accepted the inexplicable. When I was a boy I believed in gardens filled with unicorns and sprites and goblins. I knew these special places existed – I saw them in my picture books. But as a boring adult I have to balance my Rousseau-like vision of gardens of innocence hidden, Brigadoon-like beyond the next hill, with a nagging Cartesian drive to understand. I’m not entirely happy with this schizophrenic approach, but, well, there it is. My left-brained side sought out Madhav Gadgil, of the Centre for Theoretical Studies, Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and V.D. Vartak, of the Maharashtra Association for the Cultivation of Science, Poona, who are the acknowledged experts on Indian sacred groves, and who have catalogued more than 400 sacred groves in Maharastra state alone.
Mr. Gadgil and Mr. Vartak believe that sacred groves had their origins “in the hunting‑gathering stage of society, where they served to create the proper setting for cult rites, including human sacrifices.” They see a parallel between Indian sacred groves and the way in which ancient Greeks worshiped the goddess Diana and her forests.
Mr. Gadgil and Mr. Vartak also acknowledge secular reasons for establishing sacred groves, such as the preservation of a valuable plant which was relatively rare in the locality. They point out that a sacred grove of the water deities, Sati Asara, at Bombilgani (Srivardhan Taluka, Kolaba district, Maharashtra), harboured a solitary, but thriving specimen of the liana known as gaidhari (Entada phaseoloides Merr.), used in treating cattle for snakebite. This was the only specimen of this species within a radius of 40 kilometers, and people came from considerable distances to this grove to ask the priest for a piece of the medicinal
bark.
The role of sacred groves and water conservation has an unusual vehicle throughout the Hindu and Buddhist world – the naga. The naga is based on the king cobra, and symbolizes water; it guards the life-energy stored in springs, wells and ponds.
A signboard outside the Pambhumekkad Mana temple, 50 kilometers east of Cochin, India, announces that this is a place of nagas, and the family of priests in residence obtains their religious power from serpents which flourish in an adjoining sacred grove.
“Garudas, like cosmic eagles, are the enemies of the nagas, but they don’t dare enter the compound,” advises Mr. J. Jathavedan, a quick-to-smile 22-year-old priest. He excuses himself to greet an elderly woman in a white sari who has come to the door. He pours a bit of oil into her palms. She drinks it and offers a few crumpled rupees.
I ask what had happened. “She wanted holy oil,” Mr. Jathavedan explains. “The priests spend one night a year in the holy forest. It’s full of nagas, but none of us are ever bitten. We each carry a container of oil, which is sanctified by the snakes. We mix the new oil with a bit of oil a thousand years old.” He offers me some oil, and then a tastier “holy” treat – a “sacred” desert of rice pudding made with molasses, which had been blessed by the holy snakes. Can I enter the sacred grove? He laughs, shakes his head, and adds the Hindi equivalent of “the nagas would have you for lunch.”
I sit with Bo Wan Kan, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine in his village in the southern corner of China’s Yunnan province. We are in the hilly Xishuangbanna autonomous region which juts into Burma and Laos, and these forests offer a textbook example of how a sacred forestmeets people’s practical, left-brained needs as well as providing succor for their spiritual, right-brained dreams.
The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen Page 15