7.8 Environmental Conservation Movement in South Asia with
7.8.4 The Protected Areas’ Systems
The concept of protected area in India is very old. As Singh (1997) notes, the notion of ABHAYARANYA (inner sanctuaries), propagated in Kautilya’s Arthashastra (c. 2500 BP), corresponds very closely to the notion of a national park as it is being increasingly understood today. Also, historically, in many parts of the country’s village communities protected forest groves and tanks which they designated sacred. These also had the level of protection that is now being sought for national parks (Singh 1997:5). The original idea of a sanctuary in India was to ban for hunting wildlife and to declare as a conservation area. While there is still provision for hunting in certain States,
148 Comparative Chapter
there arose the modem conception of a sanctuary as a part or whole of a government forest permanently closed to shooting and in some cases to forest exploitation, grazing, and other such revenue operations as in Assam (Stracey 1963:1161; Mackinnonet al.1986 as in Singh 1997:6).
In the developing world, the modern protected area system based on the western model (Army for the protection) began only in the 19th century and in Asia from the second quarter of the 19th century (Mishra, 1991). By 2009, there were about 100,000 protected areas (PAs) in the world covering about 11.7% of the earth surface (IUCN-WCPA 2010). Among the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries, India was the first to establish a national park, the Corbett National Park, which was founded in 1936, in Uttarakhanda with the area of 520.82 sq. km. Continuing the trend, after the Independence, the India government established a second national park, Kanha National Park, on June 1, 1955. Pakistan’s first national park “Modhupur” was founded only in 1962 (in East Pakistan – current Bangladesh). In Nepal, the Chitwan National Park was the first and was established in 1973. Now in Nepal, a large number of protected areas (PAs) have been established covering 9.5% (average of four countries) of the total area. The notion of the parks establishment has been growing substantially since the first UN Environment Conference is held in Stockholm in 1972, which outlined the important of nature conservation; Figure 7.2 below gives a general overviews of marine and land surface protected areas from 1990 to 2010.
Figure 7.2 shows that, in the global context, there was 3.2% of coverage of marine protected system in 1990, which reached to the 6.7 by 2000 and dropped to the 4% in 2008. In the SAARC region, it was 1.1 in 1990, which increased by only 0.2 points by 2000 and remained constant at 1.3%. The protected areas in the land surface of the world were 8.2% in 1990, which increased to 10.7 by 2000 and reached to 11.7% in 2010. In the SAARC, it was 4.5% in 1990, and by 2000, it reached to 5.1 by 2010. In the case of individual nations, Bangladesh has the lowest coverage of the protected area system, whereas only 0.5% of the areas are under the marine protected area throughout and 0.3 points increment from 1990 to 2010 covering only the 1.7% of the land surface. India and Pakistan are also in the similar situation, whereas (India) in 1990, the total area under the marine protected was 1.4%, which reached to 1.5% in 2008, and for land surface, it was 4.1 in 1990, which increased to 4.5 in 2000 and remains constant; and in Pakistan, marine protected area is 1.1% constant over the years, with a small increase in the land surface. In contrast, in Nepal, there was only 6.8% of
7.8 Environmental Conservation Movement in South Asia 149
Figure 7.2 Protected area system increasing trend from 1990 to 2010.
Source: Data compiled from ESCAP 2010:185 (SAARC = The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation – it has seven founding members Sri Lanka, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Afghanistan joined SAARC in 2007).
land surface coverage in 1990, which reached to 16.5% in 2000 and 23% in 2010, respectively (Figure 7.2). As seen in Figure 7.2, the protected areas’
increment is continued in Asia, and four countries of this study are the best performer after Bhutan. Now there are 783 protected areas in four countries:
India 545, Pakistan 205, Nepal 22, and Bangladesh 11, respectively. However, in terms of the protected area coverage with the global percent 11.7, these four countries cover the 81.76% (that is 9.50/11.7*100) and 100% in terms of all Asia average (8.3/8.3*100), respectively.
Among the four, India has a strong economy and stabile governance sys- tem. However, in natural resource conservation, Nepal’s exemplary situation of conservation of forest and protected area management is not dismissed, even in regular violence and insecurity. As a result, the protected area land escape is reached one of the highest with an area of 34,186.62 sq. km that is 23.23% of the total area. However, in sustaining the conservational arena, in addition to the Forest and Soil Ministry and its departments, line agencies,
150 Comparative Chapter
NGOs, and CBOs, IOs like, IUCN, WWF, FAO, UNDP, JICA, DFID, and many others have been playing important roles in providing both technical and financial support in Nepal as well as Bangladesh and Pakistan, to some extent India. These four countries are also playing important roles in the conservation of wetlands and wetland resources with the same spirit as it has been for conservation of forest and management of protected areas. Each of the four countries has given high priority for the overall conservation of natural resources, including wetlands and introduced or being prepared the strong policies and programs to stop further degradation of nature. Among them, India has the established system of conservation policies. However, in terms of policy implementation and conservation, Nepal has shown the exemplary cases of natural resource management with the application of the public participation machineries. Bangladesh and Pakistan performances in conservation are relatively weak, even having a very strong involvement of IO to improve their situation (ESCAP 2010). In addressing the conserva- tion problems, there have been some efforts in the region, coordinated by various organizations such as the SAARC, Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi- Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, Asian Disaster Reduction and Response Network, IUCN regional office, UN Agency Regional Office, and several other IOs. Among them, SAARC’s initiatives are very important to address the conservation problems which hold the regional issues, partic- ularly water resources and climate change. The major cause of the weak conservation output is due to the scarcity of the resources and various types of conflicts in the region. Due to the scarcity, the conflict in natural resource utilization is seen as a normal and day-to-day problem in all four countries.
Conflicts have been occurring in the use of the natural resources such as arable land, water, hydroelectric potential, and natural gas reserves, and forest and wetland products (UNEP 1999).