Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96L.971214114555.10111H-100000@fox.ksu.ksu.edu> Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 11:49:37 -0600 From: kerry <mailto:astingsh@KSU.EDU> Subject: World Bank funding for $53 million Uttar Pradesh forestry (fwd To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 06:48:34 +0530
From: Bittu Sahgal <mailto:bittu@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in>
To: Natural History of South Asia - General discussion and research
<mailto:nathistory-india@lists.Princeton.EDU>
Subject: World Bank funding for $53 million Uttar Pradesh forestry
Vivek Tiwari wrote about a $53 million World Bank funded Forestry
Project for Uttar Pradesh and asked about its potential impact. Yes
Vivek this does mean more logging... more monocultures. It also means
NGOs and "experts" being subverted through dollar consultancies (perhaps
over 25 per cent of the total loan of $53 million); bureaucrats being
offered post-retirement assignments as a way of getting them to alter
national forest conservation policies to make them more
"market-friendly"; and the "orientation" of hundreds of forest officers
away from conservation to exploitation values through junkets to
Washington.
The World Bank, UNDP and FAO want to increase the "productivity" of
Indian forests. How touching! This is, of course, among the most
nakedly exploitative red herrings imaginable. Unfortunately, almost
every large nathist NGO is in bed with the government or the Bank,
having long ago bartered independence for security. We may therefore
have to seek our intellectual fuel to fight the World Bank's destruction
of our natural ecosystems elsewhere. In this battle I wonder how many
individuals on this list would be prepared to stand up and speak against
personal friends with whom they might have shared a lifetime of purpose,
but who now have crossed over to the "other side" thanks to lucrative
inducements and "consultancies"?
Is it perhaps time for us in India to organise a tribunal to investigate
the World Bank for possible environmental crimes against India? The
scope would necessarily include an investigation into the amounts
collected by some of our scientists and NGOs who surreptitiously
"collaborate" against ecosystems and ecosystem people... while publicly
claiming to be protecting our biodiversity.
Bittu Sahgal,
Editor, Sanctuary Magazine,
602, Maker Chambers V,
Nariman Point,
Mumbai 400 021
Fax: 022-2874380
email:<mailto:bittu@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in
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