People who prescribe treatment should get their diagnosis right and we’d like to take issue with something the minister for forests in Kerala said the other day. The minister, Binoy Viswam, was speaking at a meeting on the issue of ‘global warming’. Our staffer reported him as naming capitalism and market forces to be the cause of basic environmental problems. The sort of development these promote, he said, “does not care for the life and future of mankind. Conservation is looked down upon and profit is the ultimate goal.” It is useful to remind our communist minister that the Soviet Union and its other unlamented ex-satellite regimes in East Europe, which his party and he described as a paradise till they collapsed, had a terrible record on the environment. This wasn’t because their governments were devoted to the market or the profit motive. Humans will care for something when it is of tangible benefit; that can only happen when there is a market to fix a value and allow trade in such benefits. Forbid this and you end with a thriving black market and an end of legitimate supply and growth; forest policy of this sort is what made Veerappan, the famous dacoit.
Alternatively, Kerala’s green cover should be thriving; rivers, lakes and trees are, after all, on public land or under state control. But there is no market in preserving green cover; there is, however, a big value in cutting these and erecting structures instead. Ask green lobbyists in Kerala on their struggles with the current Left government on the issue. If Mr Viswam wishes to preserve the green, he should apply his mind to correcting this state of affairs. Judging by his remarks on the occasion, he still hasn’t got there; he spoke of the forest department target of planting 10 million saplings from June onwards. But there’s no talk of allowing the panchayats where these are to be sited to be allowed to benefit from these in any way; nor is there any state initiative to put a tangible value on such green cover in its own valuation of property.
Even the government doesn’t factor the value of a tree in its cost-benefit calculations when widening a road or deciding any other project. It’s much easier to blame capitalism and the motivation to make money, as though the answer to denuding green cover is to change human nature. Try, instead, to enable a market in conservation.