The misadventure of planting palm trees

India’s North East is said to support nearly 65% of the country’s forest cover. It is not without reason that climate scientists have called this region a biodiversity hotspot ever since the phrase “climate change” became common currency. Since then, politicians have appropriated the words climate change, bio-diversity and climate action and these words slip off their tongues with consummate ease.

Alas! Politicians don’t mean what they say and don’t say what they mean. They use these words at national and international conferences just to show how informed they are of the climate change discourse that has now become the topic of discussion even by school students.

The irony of it all is that states of the North East and by that, I mean those that are at the helm of governance in those states are in the race for planting what is globally known to be the most destructive monoculture crop – the oil palm which has wreaked havoc to the soil and climate in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and other Latin American countries.

In September this year the Modi Government announced that it would pump in Rs. 1700 Crore for oil palm plantations in the North Eastern states and the Andaman & Nicobar islands.

Oil palm is no stranger to the North East. It was attempted in Mizoram but because of its long gestation period and poor productivity, people felt it was not worth planting. By then the oil palms had devastated the soil, rendering it infertile for other crops.

Oil palm is known to be water intensive and in a state that is mountainous and where the soil can hardly retain moisture, the oil palm naturally did not give the desired results. This again is a hurried experiment, which is always the case with the North Eastern states where the ruling governments will do anything just to get money to run their governments. Tripura had tried rubber plantation; the evidence from that (mis)adventure has not yet been studied but we are quite sure that the state would have lost much of its agricultural land and impact on the ecosystem as well would have been grave.

While states like Meghalaya are in a dilemma with the Tura MP Agatha Sangma writing to the Government of India to spare the state from oil palm cultivation and her brother the State Chief Minister, Conrad Sangma, still weighing the pros and cons before rejecting oil palm plantation outright, Agatha Sangma’s eldest brother, James Sangma who is the Environment and Forest Minister of Meghalaya, has ruled out oil palm plantation saying that it will hasten climate change in the state and region.

Assam being a BJP-ruled state might not have the spine to resist what the central government decides is good for the state and its farmers. Hence areas for oil palm plantation in Assam are already being identified.

Arunachal Pradesh, another BJP ruled state, has opened its doors to oil palm plantation. The state grows tea, Kiwi fruit and a host of other fruits and vegetables and it is open to debate as to how oil palm will affect the biodiversity of the state which houses one of the most verdant national parks – the Namdapha National Park in the easternmost region of the state adjoining Myanmar.

While it is true that Arunachal Pradesh has by far the largest land area at nearly 83,000 sq km and a population of just 14 lakhs and that the state could well go in for oil palm plantation, it would have been prudent for a chief minister concerned about his land and people to get views from climate scientists before giving the green signal to oil palm plantation. But what has been observed over the decades is that the north eastern states are so cash starved and so utterly dependent on the central government for doles that they have no resistance to any overtures that look like there is money in the making.

The North Eastern states have received adequate funds from the Centre but it is the implementation of projects that leaves much to be desired. The Centre has a duty to monitor and evaluate the projects, many of which are hanging fire for decades. There are time and cost overruns but the Centre hardly cares.

Needless to say, this culture of pampering the North Eastern states had led to large scale corruption and social inequalities. The Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS) 2016-2018 had found high stunting among children in Meghalaya with 40.4 per cent of children from birth to four years suffering from stunting while the national average is around 35 per cent.

Meghalaya is just below Bihar (42 per cent) when it comes to the percentage of prevalence of stunting among children in the above age group the survey had stated. The next stage after stunting is wasting after which there is no reversal. If money was spent judiciously and there was constant monitoring, such poor health indicators would not have happened.

In a sense the North Eastern states have no autonomy to take their own decisions based on what’s good and right for the people of the region. Considering that climate is the basis on which living beings survive and its rapid change is what’s causing new and untreatable diseases, it should have been the duty of the eight states with their bio-diverse forests, plants and wildlife that should have stood up in unison against the Centre’s diabolical plans. But that is not to be because, at the end of the day federalism is just a word in India. It really does not mean anything, as much as climate change too is just a new word added to our vocabulary.

Granted that India needs to up its oil palm production since it is the edible oil of choice but bringing 6.5 lakh hectares of land under oil palm in order to increase crude oil palm production to 1.12 million tons by 2023-26 might spell doom for the region. The reason? This is a region which does not have the concept of wasteland since all land is productive. It is a sensitive climatic zone and any change here will affect the entire Himalayan eco-system and not just India’s North East.

(The writer is an editor and commentator based in Shillong)