Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari was in Goa last week to inaugurate a bunch of projects and talk politics amid the BJP’s plans to strengthen the party’s chances for the upcoming polls.
In the process, Gadkari, who had inaugurated the Loutolim-Verna missing link project, a project that was pushed through despite opposition from villagers way back when Manohar Parrikar was the chief minister, went on to declare himself as the ‘biggest environmentalist’ when attempting to counter questions from journalists about opposition to infrastructure projects that his ministry faces in Goa.
This he said, was on account of his initiatives to bring about better technologies like electric buses and cleaner fuel like ethanol-blended petrol as well as fast-tracking India’s emission norms in the transport sector. All of this is laudable and welcome, but Gadkari has only betrayed his ignorance of the environmental challenges that we are facing. Clearly, he hasn’t yet grasped the difference between the dual environmental challenges of global warming and biodiversity loss -- two of the most pressing but very distinct challenges that the planet is facing.
And while his projects threaten to exacerbate both -- the problem of global warming and the global loss of biodiversity -- the protests in Goa are primarily at preserving the rich biodiversity of this state that is pretty much unparalleled in the rest of the world. Road and railway projects that slice through hitherto untouched or scarcely influenced by human activity causes damage to animals and plants in a way that none in power seem to realise as yet.
A highway project even if not passing through a protected forest but passing through a wooded area like the one from the Loutolim hill to Verna not only came at the cost of hundreds of age-old trees that have been in existence for centuries but has also sliced the rich hill, separating what was once a continuous green patch into two halves.
It is the biggest lie that we are hearing that it is only the ‘forests’ that need to be protected whilst conveniently forgetting that biodiversity doesn’t restrict itself to ‘forests’ much less notified forests and that the rest of the space is free for ‘humans’ to exploit as they so wish. This is completely contrary to knowledge passed down to us by our forefathers that humans confine themselves to narrow safe bubbles called ‘villages’.
We have now reduced the millions of other species to ‘bubbles’ of protected forests while humans continue to pillage and plunder the earth believing the rest is fair game for exploitation. The space available to animals is reducing by the day as airports, industrial estates, roads, highways, railways, mines occupy what was once the roaming ranges of several large signature species like tigers, leopards and deers.
It is no surprise then that scientists have said we are now in the midst of the sixth great extinction that will ultimately claim us as a species, with more than half of all animal life wiped out by humans. We must recognise the damage our activities create instead of simply brushing aside such concerns with arguments that make no sense on closer examination and only serve to discredit genuine environmental movements.
Failing to plant trees in exchange for those cut will not solve the problem. A plantation cannot replace a living thriving ecosystem that is a century old forest.
