By trashing the Gadgil report recommendations, did we just kill the Western Ghats?

Older than the Himalaya, the Western Ghats, 1,600 km long stretch, makes its way through 6 states. Its ecosystem plays a critical role in influencing the monsoon and weather patterns in the subcontinent. Known for its exceptionally high biodiversity and endemism, unique only to this part of the world, it is home to Tiger Reserves, National Parks, Wildlife Sanctuaries, and Reserved Forests. It is the source of thousands of medicinal plants. What makes the Western Ghats special is that while its total area is less than 6 % of the land area of India, the Western Ghats contains more than 30%  of all plant, fish, bird, and mammal species found in India. It contains genetic resources of numerous spices, grains and fruits. More importantly, the Ghats and its forests sustain the livelihoods of approximately 245 million people who live in the Indian states that receive most of their water supply from rivers originating in the region.

When Jairam Ramesh was the Minister for Environment and Forest, he commissioned renowned ecologist Madhav Gadgil to study the Western Ghats and offer recommendations for its conservation. The report, when ready, was neither shared and nor made public for over a year.

After PILs were filed, the Court ordered the MoEF to put the report in the public domain -  Gadgil called for the highest protection to the Ghats and marked the entire Ghats as eco sensitive. He classified the entire area into three zones, depending on how fragile it was. He also recommended a gradual phasing out of all existing mining activities over five years and no new licenses to be issued.

The then UPA Government squashed the report which was found to be inconvenient to the wants of industry. The Kerala government was the first to strongly oppose it claiming it is impractical and will come in the way of its “development”. Other states chanted the same mantra prompted by the mining and real estate lobbies.

Ramesh’s successor , Jayanti Natarajan, dismissed the report and sought a second opinion - that in itself was wrong and caused some amount of confusion .She commissioned  K Kasturirangan to do another study. When complete this study found that only 37% of the Western Ghats is eco-sensitive and that mining, construction, dam-building and other destructive activities can be allowed in the rest of the area of the Ghats. Kasturirangan diluted the Gadgil report to favour industry and appease the crony capitalists in all the states through which the Ghats and its spurs run. Till now no decision has been taken in favour of either report.

Madhav Gadgil is better placed than Kasturirangan to recommend to the MoEFCC about  protecting the Western Ghats - one is an ecologist who knows the Western Ghats better than anyone else, the other a scientist, and ex planning commission member.

Sadly the decision to reject the report was communicated on August 27 by the NDA government to the National Green Tribunal. Once again, the debate is cast as a split: if you support Gadgil, you are called anti-development, anti-growth, regressive etc. But the evidence has been gathering all along the Ghats for decades - in an era of climate instability, fast-changing monsoon patterns and the pressures of urbanisation and resource extraction, the destruction of the Western Ghats as is now being sanctioned by the BJP-led NDA government will dangerously affect the climate of peninsular India and further endanger the livelihoods and well-being of millions in the river basins whose streams originate in these lush hills.

Those who support full and non-negotiable protection of the entire Western Ghats are not idealists; they are amongst those Indians who keep our connection with nature current, a connection that goes back to the Vedas. It is capitalist forces and growth-obsessed policies that will, if unchecked, brutally destroy that relationship – a relationship that was celebrated in the hymns of the Rig Vedas.

It is in our long-term interest to protect every hillside and valley and stream of the Western Ghats and not open up the fragile region to senseless "development". If we do not, generations to come will pay a huge price.

This article first appeared in DNA on 29th August 2014

Coffee Works

Coffee plant

This is coffee when it first starts – up in the beautiful and verdant Western Ghats of India, almost pristine, in harmony with its biodiversity, its rivers, its wildlife, its trees and  hills, sacred  groves, (Devara Kaadu) local deities and farmers. Under a high canopy of shade trees, coffee in India grows gloriously alongside pepper, cardamom, oranges and arecenut.

The coffee flower smells nothing like what it taste - the flowering of the coffee plant, gives a sweet fragrance, intoxicating the entire landscape.The blossom of the coffee plant transforms the landscape to appear like a white, fragrant laden sheet – its smell sweet, the air  gentle. This rousing lasts ,sadly, for just a few days before the coffee flower matures to become the  coffee seed and ready to be picked.

Coffee blossom

She is then gently handpicked and and mostly sun dried . Sometimes sent to a local Curing Works. Once dried, she is put into sacks and stored -usually in the store room of the residence of the coffee grower. She awaits the agent.

  

Coffee grows only in tropical countries and grown mostly by small farmers as a cash crop. Due to the predominance of small coffee growers in India, (according to The Coffee Board of India almost  98% of coffee is grown by marginalized and small farmers) , coffee is sold through agents – this buying and selling happens at the “gate”. The agent offers a price and farmer takes what he gets – because some commodity trader sitting in a glass office has decided the price of this precious bean.

A coffee farmer sun drying his coffee

Coffee seeds  are  dried, roasted and powdered to make coffee powder.Sometimes the coffee goes to towns and cities for further trade and household consumption- as filter coffee, in South India, or as ghastly instant coffee that is produced by the likes of Nestle.Some find their way into cafés to become  the classic espresso, or  cappuccino or other high street coffees - for which there are millions of consumers who are willing to pay a couple of dollars a pop. In the multibillion coffee industry, the profits go mainly to the shippers, the roasters and the retailers.

 But if you are a traditional coffee drinker and relish your coffee, you avoid the Starbucks and Café Coffee Days - instead you would go to an unpretentious hole in the wall –  "Gayathri Coffee Works" for   example- and buy premium Arabica coffee, freshly grounded for about Rs. 360 a kilo.

Gayathri Coffee Works, Mysore

The insufferable hypocrisy of Starbucks

The giant global coffee company, Starbucks Corporation, has recently been in the news for all the wrong reasons. With over 20,000 odd stores in over 60 countries from Aruba to Wales, the  Starbucks stores are ubiquitous  in high street locations, serving up all kinds of brews and blends – from coffee sourced from Ethiopia to Hawaii. Starbucks now joins the infamous rank of companies that avoid paying tax. A recent Reuters investigation found that the company reportedly paid hardly any tax in UK, despite generating over £3bn in sales over 14 years, but had paid less than 1% in corporation tax. Worse still, Starbucks often reported a loss in its UK business, yet consistently told shareholders that Starbucks was profitable. In 2011, their total annual revenue was $11.7 billion on which they hardly paid tax. Britons are now raving mad that in 2011, Starbucks did not pay a penny by way of corporate tax , despite sales of $640 million. In an attempt to regain its credibility and public image, Starbucks has now promised a £20m corporate tax pledge. But this is too little, too late.

For any business it is perfectly legitimate to make profits and therefore perfectly legitimate to pay taxes. While Starbucks may have not done anything " illegal ", to me it reeks of nothing less than rapaciousness and corporate greed - finding complex tax schemes,creating international subsidiaries, finding ways of moving money to low rate regimes, to avoid paying tax on their profits. According to Forbes,Starbucks CEO ,Mr. Howard Schultz , personal net worth is  $1.5billion.

It is estimated that 1.6 billion cups of coffee are drunk worldwide everyday. Coffee is a $80 billion business today  and it is often said that  it is the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil. However, the share of the coffee trade enjoyed by the actual coffee grower  has fallen by two-thirds,whilst transnational coffee companies have reaped huge profits from the low price they pay to the producer.According to Anthony Wild, the average price paid to coffee producers internationally has fallen 80% since their last high in 1997. The widening gap between the have and the have-nots are illustrated in the growing inequalities of the coffee trade.Most of the coffee growers are small producers and this is specially true of Ethiopia where some of the finest coffees are produced - the coffee farmer can own as few as 20 plants. The story is no different in India - where 98.5% of coffee farmers are small holders. Since they are at the mercy of the global coffee trade which squeezes them for their own profits, coffee farmers are being forced to abandon their holdings and move to cities seeking a different  and often uncertain future.

The boom in coffee consumption means next to nothing for the coffee producer .That Starbucks creates new markets in different countries does not help the producer. Today the coffee farmer is being battered by climate change on one side and speculative trading on the other - the small farmer in the Western Ghats of South India , or in the Sidamo Province of Ethiopia faces unpredictable weather patterns,unseasonal rain, rising temperatures , periods of drought followed by periods of flooding ,is desperate to save his crop  and   his livelihood so as to provide for his family .But sadly, a  trader sitting in London or New York will  decide the price of the coffee to be paid to the farmer and the coffee farmer is lucky, if in the end ,he even gets 10% of what you just paid to Starbucks Corporation  for your Latte.

So for a company that says they strive to "strike a balance between profitability and social conscience," they have a long way to go.