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