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BOOK
REVIEW
First nation tragedies
Globalization and Indigenous
Peoples in Asia, by Pierre Walter, Dev Nathan
and Govind Kelkar (ed)
Reviewed by Chanakya
Sen
Professor Wangari Maathai's awarding of the
2004 Nobel Peace Prize is recognition of the worldwide
struggle of indigenous people to own the forests that
they manage and conserve for the rest of humanity. The
volume under review reveals the processes whereby first
nations in China, India and Nepal are subjected to
steady  "resource exclusion". It
proposes changes in the terms on which they interact
with lowland people and global markets.
First
nation peoples are pivotal suppliers of environmental
(ecosystem) services like climate control, biodiversity,
soil nutrition and clean water. Yet they are
uncompensated for producing these regional and global
public goods. Their cultural products and knowledge are
extracted free of charge by bio-pirates. International
environmental conventions and state policies are
restricting them from accessing their livelihood
opportunities and displacing them from land ownership.
Globalization "increases further marginalization,
disempowerment and desperation" (p 16) among hill-forest
dwellers.
Seventy percent of the world's
aboriginals live in Asia. They are characterized by high
poverty, low literacy, high malnutrition, low life
expectancy, high morbidity and low human-rights.
"Policies for the indigenous peoples have so far been
framed with a view to the benefits that can be extracted
for the outside economies". (p 20) Victimized and
socially isolated, bereft of tenure and ownership rights
over forests, first nations suffer daily coercion.
Rapacious timber extraction and logging by
states and private companies are based on the misplaced
notion of forests as terra nullius, land devoid of
people. Land degeneration, soil erosion, fertility
depletion, landslides and disappearance of non-timber
forest products are the results of clear-felling
policies of external actors. They have caused income
falls, urban migration and other uncompensated losses to
hill economies.
Dev Nathan's opening essay calls
for an acknowledgement of indigenous ownership of
forests, exercised as a combination of communal and
individual tenure. State command and control approaches
have to give way to an incentive system involving
pricing of environmental services. Upland people should
be able to sell these services to the lowlands as is
being done in Costa Rica, Switzerland and New York City.
Lowlands should not be allowed to benefit from upland
services free of cost, exacerbating the iniquities in
living standards between plains and mountain areas.
Sanjay Kumar's piece on indigenous know-how of
tribals in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand argues
that their knowledge is not only technical but also
cultural and sociological. Villagers know forests are
crucial for clean air and make conscious efforts to
protect tree species that are pollution controllers. The
role of forests in hydrology (precipitation, rainfall
and water purification) is well understood and enhanced.
Trees useful as growth promoters of aquatic food are
carefully grown. Awareness of moisture and nutrient
flows from forests for farmlands is passed down to new
generations. Forests are meticulously harnessed for
storm and pest protection functions too. The
"cosmovision" of indigenous people, manifested in
elaborate cultural events and beliefs, is tied to trees
and forests. Kumar calls for collating this mine of
local knowledge with dominant Western-imported forestry
management concepts.
Wang Qinghua's case study
of the Hani in China's Yunnan province illustrates the
important role of forests in terraced agriculture.
Locals appreciate forests as natural green dams and
disallow logging through special regulations, watchmen
and punishments. Inorganic fertilizer use is minimal.
Hani women are experts in usage, taste and properties of
wild plants. A socialized and "sacralized" relationship
with nature has allowed regeneration of forests for
centuries. Hani traditional practices were dubbed
superstitious and eliminated during the Great Leap
Forward (1958) and Learn from Dazhai Movement (1972).
New policies after 1982 have allowed reversion to
low-impact uses of the forest by the indigenous people.
Yu Xiaogang's article on the Yi and Naxi people
in Lijiang, Yunnan, portrays how government projects
seriously hurt first nations. Benefits of so-called
development and environmental measures have flown to
external stakeholders, ie urban and downstream agrarian
areas. "Local people are getting marginalized, since
every decision that affects them is made by outside
centers". (p 135) Intensive logging by the state has
left a destructive trail of soil erosion, lake
sedimentation, droughts and floods. Uncontrolled private
household logging is another problem that the Yi and
Naxi are unable to check. Yu recommends embedding
decision-making in local hands as a component of
economic democracy.
Tiplut Nongbri discusses the
disastrous effects of the 1996 ban on tree felling and
all wood-based activities in northeast India. It
suddenly terminated livelihood sources for the Khasi and
Garo tribes of Meghalaya. To escape starvation, they are
now "descaling" trees (removing and selling bark),
migrating to urban slums etc. The rural economy has
taken a steep downward slide, thanks to the blanket
proscription on access to forests. The ban is an
extension of draconian state power and a demonstration
of the erroneous assumption that the state is the best
guardian of forests. A similar ban in China in 1998
choked local accumulation, put the brakes on local
development and deprived indigenous people of the right
to use their own resources.
Dev Nathan's account
of the large-scale privatization of forests in northeast
India is a classic discourse on the pros and cons of
market-induced transformation of indigenous economies.
In the bid to maximize short-term income, some
indigenous people are over-harvesting the "unregulated
commons" and under-providing environmental services.
Moneymaking by hook or crook has gained respectability
and there is a concomitant attenuation of social
obligations to the needy. Collective action to maintain
forest quality and counter internal class
differentiation is much required.
Pierre Walter
recounts the response of Hani people to the explosive
growth of tourism in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan. In 1991,
Hani of Manmo village built a locally-managed
eco-tourism reserve, only for it to be appropriated for
"ethno-pilfering" by Han Chinese entrepreneurs. The
reserve is being employed to propagate cultural images
that satisfy Han majority stereotypes and a "colonial
ranking of ethnicities". (p 216) Eco-tourism has also
deteriorated the gender division of labor to the
detriment of women.
Govind Kelkar's observations
in Lijiang corroborate the negativities for indigenous
women from tourism. Men, privileged with external
contacts and mobility, garner the lion's portion of
tourist income. Growth of tourism is expanding male
superiority even among historically matrifocal
communities. Tourism-driven patriarchy can only be
neutralized if women are admitted to external knowledge
and resource management.
Girija Shrestha
profiles the interesting experiment in 10 districts of
Nepal of leaseholds to the poor as an incentive for
investment in currently degraded forests. Leasing or
auctioning of badly denuded forests to the highest
bidders do not address equity concerns of women and the
poor among first nations. Nepalese Tamang, Praja and
other lowest castes have splendidly taken care of the
leases. The vegetative cover has improved along with the
productive base of the impoverished. Women have the
freedom to bypass male-mediated access to forests. Asset
transfer, rather than the typical economist prescription
of income transfer, has been more just.
N S
Jodha explains why forest products are facing export
market problems. Presently, costs of management of
forests are not reflected in pricing. Only the costs of
gathering are reflected. Food-insecure first-nation
producers are involved in an unequal exchange with the
rest of the world. Monopsony in the buyer's market
compounds the under-pricing. Indigenous producers have
to form organizations to strengthen their bargaining
position and attain countervailing market power.
Capacity-building in organic agriculture and other niche
products can enhance comparative advantage. Information
technology can bridge distances between producers and
markets and realize fairer prices. "Knowledge-based
workers" are emerging among first nations in northern
Thailand and Kalimantan.
Integration of
aboriginals into the global economy has triggered
civilizational changes. The new organizing principles of
society are accumulation and wealth creation. Markets
benefit first nations by allowing higher levels of
income, consumption by choice and efficiency in resource
use. The flip side of the coin is masculine domination
and inequalities in access to resources. Every author in
this book believes in restrictions on property rights
and non-market access when it comes to critical natural
resources. Public intervention in privatization alone
can mitigate elite exploitation of the indigenes.
Globalization and Indigenous Peoples in
Asia, by Pierre Walter, Dev Nathan and Govind Kelkar
(ed). Sage Publications, New Delhi, August 2004. ISBN:
0-7619-3253-4. Price: US$15, 339 pages.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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