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Journalism of Courage
In this village tucked deep in the Gadchiroli forest, a group of tribals are huddled over a small plant. An old woman digs it out and Devaji Tofa examines the roots and confirms it8217;s the white musali8212;a medicinal plant.
Mendha villagers have known white musali for generations. But the last two years have seen them systematically jotting down details of all plants and animals in the 1,800-hectare forest around their village.
Almost done with quantifying and evaluating their biological assets, Mendha now sees itself as the rightful owner of its rich biodiversity. And the credit rests with Madhav Gadgil, this year8217;s winner of the Swedish Volvo Prize for his contribution to environment sustainability.
Gadgil, an ecologist from the Centre for Ecological Sciences CES at Bangalore8217;s Indian Institute of Science, is the architect of People8217;s Biodiversity Register PBR.
8216;8216;The idea of villagers maintaining PBR was born during our study of the Western Ghats Development Project work in 1990-91,8217;8217; says Gadgil, who was given the job by the Central government8217;s Hill Area Development Advisory Committee. 8216;8216;I involved students/teachers of 42 colleges in the area. They realised that different government departments were working at cross-purposes.8217;8217; he remembers. 8216;8216;Moreover, traders and industries exploit the natural wealth in villages to mint money, especially the medicine manufacturers. I believe any benefit of such valuable natural resources should first go to the villagers. Biodiversity cannot be preserved without involving the local people,8217;8217; says Gadgil, who has fought many ecological battles since 1974.
The 1991 Rio Earth Summit gave the initial international thrust to this plan. The International Biodiversity Convention, where Gadgil is member of the scientific advisory body, adopted a three-point resolution in 1993, including the one on biodiversity conservation.
The Indian enactment came much later in 2002, but Gadgil was constantly at work. In 1995, he inspired a two-year programme of registering biodiversity in 50 villages in nine states with the help of NGOs.
But the big step was taken in 2000 when the PBR project was undertaken in five Karnataka villages with the help of their residents.
Gadgil8217;s experience in the field provided a good launching pad for the Biodiversity Conservation Act in 2002, which provides for royalty to villagers in exchange for their intellectual and biological property. Under it, the outsiders8212;individuals or organisations8212;need to seek the villagers8217; consent to exploit the biodiversity, commercially or otherwise. If the village agrees, they will have to pay even for the information.
The results of the current work are being discussed at five workshops. The programme will then be launched in 300 villages all over the country. Till then, Gadgil has no time to retire.
