UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY MUST ENACT ECOLOGY LAW FOR SPECIES SURVIVAL

 In connection with World Ecology Law let us review the following article:
 Economic and Political weekly, January 11 1986. Pp 84-90.

 Environmental Conflicts and Public Interest Science

 Vandana Shiva and J Bandopadhyay

 Part Review by Ramaswami Ashok Kumar

 The review is done in line within the article as it proceeds.

 Date of review June-July 2020

 NB: references in the article are numbered 1,2 etc while the references in the    review are numbered R0, R1 etc.

Review copyright © 2020 Ramaswami Ashok Kumar

The emergence of Public Interest Science is critical to a just resolution of conflicts over natural resources, since in its absence, partisan science is given the status of a neutral, value-free, independent tool for resolving conflicts. However, since partisan science is cognitively rooted in special vested interests, it tends to bias public policy decisions in their favour and against public interest. In support of this argument the authors review the role of public interest science in environmental action in the Doon Valley and in the forest struggles.

This paper puts forward two central theses. Firstly, it shows potential or actual environmental or resource conflicts as the most dominant contradiction of our times(1). Secondly it views science or systematic knowledge as a central component of contemporary resource conflicts in a dual manner. As partisan reductionist science, knowledge becomes a source of environmental destruction and resource appropriation. As public interest ecological science, people’s knowledge can become a countervailing force in resource destruction mediated by partisan science. The emergence of public interest science is critical to a just resolution of conflicts over natural resources, since in its absence, partisan science is given the status of a neutral, value-free independent tool for resolving conflicts. However, since partisan science is cognitively rooted in special vested interests, it tends to bias public decisions in their favour and against the larger public interest(2).

To establish that this is not empty theorizing, but the basis of existing political struggles, two case studies are provided where public interest science has strengthened people’s struggles for a right to life and sustenance.

1.      Conflicts over natural resources

The recent period in human history contrasts with all the earlier ones in its strikingly high rate of resource utilization. Ever expanding and intensifying industrial and agricultural production has generated increasing demands on the world’s total stock and flow of resources(R1).  These demands are mostly generated from the industrially advanced countries in the North and the industrial enclaves in the underdeveloped countries in the South. Paradoxically the increased dependence of the industrialised  societies on the resources of nature through the quick spread of energy and resource intensive production technologies, has been accompanied by the spread of the myth that increased dependence on modern technologies means a decreased dependence on nature and natural resources.

This myth is supported by the introduction of long and indirect chains of resource utilization which leaves invisible real material resource demands of the industrial processes.

R. Ashok Kumar’s review

 See Tables 3.2.1a and 3.2.1b below for Input-Output Analysis bringing out this fact.

This property of modern civilization is being made a little but inadequately  transparent by the development of input-output analyses: a model of inputs and outputs  used in production, consumption and waste in modern daily life. This includes a set of statistical equations which relate the input requirements of each industry to its output. This required detailed statistical measures based on business census records and solution of thousands of simultaneous equations. This helps indicate the bottleneck obstacles that must be overcome to implement policies to attain stated but ill perceived effects of implementation of stated policies.

INDIA INPUT-OUTPUT ANALYSIS

There is an increase of 43.5% in the use of resources from 2010 value of 1364012 to the 2017 value of 1957705  probably in 2010 constant US $.

 Look at the long chains of resource use:

See reference R1.

Original article(cont’d)

Through this combination of resource intensity at the material level and resource indifference at the conceptual and political levels, the conflicts over natural resources generated by the new pattern of resource utilisation are generally shrouded and ignored. The conflicts become visible when the resource and energy intensive industrial technologies are challenged by the communities whose survival depends on the conservation of the resources threatened by destruction and overexploitation. Or when the devastatingly destructive potential of some industrial technologies is demonstrated at a go as in the Bhopal disaster.

Ecology movements emerging from the conflicts over natural resources and the people’s right to survival are spreading in regions like the Indian subcontinent where most natural resources are already being utilised to provide the basic needs for survival to a large population. The introduction of resource and energy intensive production technologies under such conditions has the consequence of creating economic growth for a small minority while at the same time undermining the material basis for survival of the large majority.

For centuries, vital natural resources like land, water and forests had been controlled and used collectively by village communities while ensuring sustainable use of these renewable resources. The first radical change in resource control and introduction of major conflicts over natural resources induced by non-local factors was associated with colonial domination of this part of the world. The colonial domination systematically transformed the common vital resources into commodities for generating profits and growth of revenues. The first industrial revolution was to a large extent supported by this transformation of commons to commodities which made South Asian resources available for the European industries.

R. Ashok Kumar’s Review.

The effect of this transformation of common vital resources into commodities for generating profits and growth of revenues.

Imperialist specialist industrial rule’s forced domination of India and the world inaugurated the great ecological disaster which continued  even after the sun set on British imperialism with India’s simultaneous independence and dependence on the original imperialist policies. The effect is captured in two facts:

1.      The forests vanished all over India – the impoverishment and regression of the forests resulted in isolated inaccessible miniscule areas. The economy based on income from nature which was zero cost and self-sufficient for ten thousand years till 1850  was destroyed with the destruction of ecology. People congregated in the cities built by the colonialists especially for concentrating humans so that they became consumption centres for their manufactured imported goods. Population exploded(R0). The effects of this transformation can never be exaggerated. In nature, a few species are common, some less common but many are rare. When the imperialist industrial conquerors clear felled the climax forests on the Indian subcontinent and adjoining areas for their ships and wars and furniture and other infrastructure they destroyed ecology- the diversity, the balance between the species on which forests survive. These forests are lost forever. Even the miniscule isolated forest pockets are being encroached upon for roads and hydroelectric dams and other industry like coal and uranium and copper mining and gas, airports and so on. The destruction of diversity throughout the world resulted in alteration and homogenization  of species composition. Rivers were killed by dams together with the ecology of the river basins. This large scale modification by deforestation, mining, and the industrial pollution, chemicalization of agriculture all resulted in conversion of the environment and habitat into poisonous contamination of the earth- a continuous radiological, biological and chemical warfare on the earth. The signals of this modern civilization, a society of specialists, were a plenty- the 1918 flu pandemic, the bird flus, malaria, kayasanur forest disease,the series of nuclear reactor melts and the poisoning of the Pacific ocean, the devastating hurricanes and cyclones including climate change,  and many others culminating in COVID19 and the reported China  bubonic plague today. Man is as usual trying to buy a truce with the virus through a vaccine still to be made available and working without going to the root cause- modern civilization with the dams.

2.      With the forests reduced to isolated relicts, COVID19 came to isolate by fear of death by COVID19 each individual in his/her home. When the individual did not have shelter, he/she was anyway finished or left to fend for himself/herself to trudge back home walking hundreds of kilometers to the villages they originally came from because for the government they did not exist, except when it became obvious that the rich and the officials and preferred citizens were threatened with death because of the ignored masses of people and other life who could not follow the shutdown restrictions. But because the viruses are transmitted by world dam dynamics and which the partisan science would like to know nothing of, the condition of the crisis is interminable and passes from one such crisis to another- relapse and resurgence to extinction. This suicide by modern civilization is being reflected in its followers- the people of all ages and classes are committing suicide, as they feel society cannot help them.

3.      To survive the world through the UN general assembly must immediately enact the ECOLOGY ACT whereby modern civilization with emphasis on mining nature is totally abandoned and public interest science is followed so that nature is preserved even in its relicts- the isolated pockets and protected from the scourge of a society of specialists and ecology rules the day:

4.      Ecology: The branch of biology that deals  with the relations of organisms to one another and their surroundings.

5.      The lesson for policy makers from this discussion: They must undergo a strict, urgent and rigorous training in the ecology and biogeography of India(R2) and initiate and implement a rigorous set of rules to preserve life and ecology while pursuing activities for a decent living. They must recognize the hitherto ignored effects of modern civilization and its components like the world’s dams on habitats and survival of all life on earth(R3). 

R- References

R0.  Ramaswami Ashok Kumar. 2012. India Population Unstable because of Pollution. Link at

https://indiahumanpopulation.blogspot.com/2012/08/india-population-unstable-because-of.html?m=1

R1. ADB Data Library.2020. India Input-Output Economic Indicators. Link at

https://data.adb.org/dataset/india-input-output-economic-indicators

R2. M.S. Mani.1974. Ecology and Biogeography in India. Chapter V. Limiting Factors: p152-158

R3. Ramaswami Ashok Kumar.2020. PERFECT DESIGNS: WORLD DAM DYNAMICS TRANSMITS VIRUSES. Link at:

https://livingnormally.blogspot.com/2020/06/world-dam-dynamcs-tra-nsmits-viruses.html