Deforestation In Kerala Essay

[Mariela Coxon]

Thereis a need for a set of actions to achieve an environmentally sustainable and welfare-enhancing future for the people of Kerala. These require the use of technological solutions; institutional changes; public investments to make the future environmentally benign, and; enabling policies at the state level.

This article assesses the linkages between development and the environment in Kerala. Has Kerala achieved higher levels of economic development by degrading its natural environment? Is it possible for Keralites to achieve an improvement in their welfare without damaging their fragile ecosystem? These are the questions taken up in this article.

This slight increase in the land area under forest cover could be partly3 due to the increase in the tree cover in commercial plantations outside the forest areas. There is also an improvement in interpretation due to better radiometric resolution of satellite data.4 There could be some improvement in the quality or density of core forests too in different parts of the state. This has been the national trend currently (Santhakumar, 20175). However, there could be a few additional factors that have led to a higher level of deforestation in the past and a reversal of that trend currently in Kerala.

Land has been a very scarce resource in the state, and there was a period when people from the plains migrated to the hilly and forested areas and converted parts of these into agricultural land, causing a severe decline in the area under the forests. However, that trend of deforestation seems to have ceased lately. There could be a number of enabling factors. There is a greater awareness of the need to protect forests and there are active environmentalists creating this awareness and also pushing the state for taking stringent measures to protect forests.

Most of these activist groups are from the plains, midlands and urban areas, and hence, most of them are not the beneficiaries of the extension of agriculture and plantations in the high ranges. Though there is a certain political interest in granting property rights to those who have encroached on forests in the past, this does not aid further encroachment. The incentives of the forest officials have changed and they are keen to protect forests rather than use them for timber production or even for other social purposes. For example, they may even oppose the granting of rights to the tribal population in the name of forest protection, and this population is not in a position to assert their claims electorally or politically.6 The decline in the interest in agriculture (especially, seasonal crops), due to the shift of the workforce to industrial and service sectors has also contributed to the increase in tree cover in cultivated lands. For all these reasons, there has been a shift in the politics of forest use, and it is currently aiding the conservation rather than its destruction.

A major form of pollution leading to higher mortality and morbidity in poorer countries is caused by the burning of biomass as cooking fuel and its contribution to indoor air pollution. This has been a major issue in India. However, it does not seem to be a cause for concern in Kerala. This can be due to the use of LPG by a higher share of households within the state. Some accounts show the coverage of LPG as more than 100 percent in the state, but this need not necessarily mean a complete avoidance of biomass burning for cooking purposes. There could be more than one LPG connection in some households on the one hand, and some households without an LPG connection on the other. Even those households which have access to LPG may not use it for all purposes and a part of the cooking (and heating water) may be carried out using biomass. However, even when biomass is used, the situation could be somewhat better in Kerala. This is so since there have been efforts to popularise chulahs which burn biomass efficiently without causing too much indoor pollution.

The use of fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture is not that high if we take the state as a whole (though there could be pockets where such use is high) for a number of reasons: there is a general declining trend or interest in agriculture; agriculture is not as remunerative as earlier; the majority of people do not derive their main income from this occupation; there is a predominance of tree-crops; there is also a certain awareness about the harmful effects of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and so on. For these reasons, the pollution caused by the drainage from farm fields (with a higher fertilizer content) and the consequent eutrophication of water bodies is also not that high in Kerala. One advantage of the distributed or scattered settlement (though there are many other disadvantages) is the availability of land for most people to absorb their domestic wastewater (other than sewage). Hence, one may not see much of the wastewater from domestic uses flowing into public spaces as in settlements in the rural areas of other parts of India. To a great extent, higher rainfall and higher water flow in rivers and other water bodies during a significant part of the year also reduce the impact of water pollution or enhance the absorption capacity of water bodies. However, the practice of dumping solid waste into water bodies continues and this is discussed in the following section.

Kerala has been urbanising at a very rapid rate and by 2017 more than 50 percent of Keralites were living in urban households. The impact of urbanisation on the environment, so far, has been mixed. On one hand, urbanisation has resulted in more population density, including the construction of high-rise buildings leading to increased pressure on land for building construction. However, increased population density in urban areas without the support of required urban services, such as public transport, solid waste management and wastewater supply, has resulted in major urban environmental issues in Kerala, and we take up some of these issues too in a following section.

Secondly, Kerala has also come up with stringent measures to protect a practice which it considers important for ecological conservation. This is the paddy cultivation in low-lying lands which become waterlogged during the monsoon. The state has put in place legislation that bans the conversion of paddy fields for other uses. (Whether such a ban is the most rational strategy is another issue but that can be taken up later in the essay). This ban is also enforced in a somewhat stringent manner, and this too demonstrates the existence and functioning of institutions for the protection of the environment in Kerala which are driven by local demand.

Kerala has also implemented the decentralisation of governance to the local level in a manner that is much more impactful than that in other states. The local governments are also responsible for the creation and maintenance of local public goods and some of these (like the maintenance of water bodies, avoidance of pollution, excessive withdrawal of natural resources and solid waste disposal) are important for the protection of the environment. Though the actual provision of these services varies from one local government to the other, there are examples where such governments take an active interest in this regard. There are panchayats which have not allowed the establishment of polluting factories; which have made notable efforts to protect local biodiversity,13 and which keep the public spaces relatively clean.

A major problem that Kerala has been facing is with regard to the use of land. Historically, this region has witnessed a very high density of population. When agriculture was the main source of income, there was a huge demand for land for cultivation. The nature of human settlements has also enhanced the demand for land. The natural environment of Kerala has facilitated a distributed settlement. The facilitating factors include the possibility of cultivation in small pieces of land around the house; the availability of water through open wells traditionally in each piece of land, and so on, and these may have also created a social environment that sustained distributed settlements all over the state. People generally want to have an independent house, probably within a piece of land that can be used for cultivation or planting of trees. An important implication for the high demand for land was the use of land that is not naturally suitable for human habitation such as hill slopes or areas that are prone to waterlogging.

In general, a major part of human settlements in Kerala continues to be in ecologically sensitive areas and blocks the functions of natural systems, like the wetlands and streams. This can have a direct and negative impact on human life. First, there can be landslides occasionally leading to the loss of property and life. There can also be a minimisation of area for the temporary storage of water during the rains, and this can lead to flooding or not enough storage of water for recharge purposes. These changes may become costly to human life when there are changes in the rainfall pattern as part of climate change. This is indicated by the floods that have occurred in Kerala during the last couple of years.

The state is yet to evolve a viable and sustainable solid-waste management system in its cities and other urban areas. There are a number of complexities here. The conventional model of centralised collection and disposal becomes almost socially unviable due to the non-availability of lands which are far away from human settlements. People live everywhere, and they object to the establishment of waste treatment facilities near their homes. The decentralised but safe treatment systems are yet to become a reality in non-rural parts of the state. Disposal could be an issue, especially in commercial establishments even in rural areas, due to the absence of enough land for decentralised disposal systems.15 The tendency to dispose of degradable and non-degradable waste (like plastics) together in public spaces continues. Though there were efforts to ban the use of certain types of plastics; the enforcement is not complete since the enforcement cost of such punitive measures could be very high. It is costly to use punitive measures when people throw away waste into public spaces, especially in localities and times when other people are not around.

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