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| Tuesday, 19 October 2004 |
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Tree planting with a perspective Not just a tree planting campaign in the conventional way. It's rather a way of mobilizing local communities. More, it's an endeavour to regain people's rights and obligations viz-a-viz the bio diversity.
Proceeding from the vision that the life struggles of different communities are, in effect, the struggles to preserve the bio-diversity, the Movement for the Protection of Indigenous Seeds (MPIS) is mobilizing peasant communities in and around Eppawala in the Anuradhapura district for a campaign to plant ten thousand trees. On October 4, 2004 men and women of the area gathered at the Eppawala Galkanda Purana Raja Maha Vihara to receive plants from Venerable Mahamankadawala Piyarathana Thera, Incumbent of the temple, clergy, school children with teachers, public officials and others concerned with bio-diversity and ecology participated at the inaugural ceremony. A mass of peasants - men, women and children thronged the temple premises to receive plants and spread out around tanks and along paddy field ridges with heart filling hopes of living in healthy environs without the scourge of drought. It is of especial significance that the trees to be planted have been selected after ascertaining their morphological characteristics and monitoring their growth over a period of time. That is to ensure their suitability to respective micro ecological and their propensity to survive drought conditions while sustaining moisture. The criterion of selecting different species of trees for planting was the question of how a land zone with a rich diversity of tropical vegetation that preserved perennial water resources transformed into an arid and desolate zone, euphemistically called the 'dry zone'. A visitor to the drought stricken North-Central Province could not have missed the saddening sight of groups of people digging the rock-hard ground for a bit of water. These locations once had bubbling water springs and knee-deep puddles. They have now dried up. The spouting was caused by the ground water in the hill country pressing down to force the ground water in low lands to spring up to the surface, which in turn was preserved and stimulated by a diversity of vegetation. One need not have to be a geologist to understand this simple law of nature. Particular species of trees and creepers preserve stimulate and cleanse underground and surface water. If water springs, streams and puddles are to be preserved in perpetuity, there should be particular species of trees that protect them from evapo-transpiration, cleanse them and even stimulate them. Kumbuk, Middle, Mee and Kaduru are tree species that enrich water. Tree species and water entities that enriched each other in a process of interaction existed throughout the North Central Province, as elsewhere. However, the havoc wreaked by development projects like the Mahaweli, by timber and herb pirates and by the ever thirsty Green Revolution, tolled the bell for this bio-diversity and water resources, leaving the province dry and desolate. The ghostly profile of desertification is already looming ahead. Trees and creepers to be planted by the people of Eppawala would be those that old forestall this grave danger. Species for planting were carefully selected and nursed in pots. Kumbuk, Etemba, Mee, Karanda, Mora, Kone, Muruta, Thimbiri, Nelli, Bulu, Kaduru and a host of other species have been prioritized. Mobilizing rural people for the tree planting campaign is a significant strategy from a development perspective. In all earlier tree planting projects, the players were politicians and other influential people. In deed, the conventional development framework was fated to be a still birth, because, the rural people were totally excluded. Since plants do not grow merely because they were planted by great men, they too were fated to a still birth. In this instance, tree planting has been entrusted to men and women of local communities with a dual purpose: one is to ensure the survival and growth of the plant; second is to mobilize rural people so that their social consciousness will be raised. Seized by such consciousness they will stand on their own feet with self-reliance. As for trees planted, each man or woman will yearn to see that the tree planted by him or her is growing lusciously. It will be watered and taken care of. That is the ultimate pride and satisfaction of rural people. With all trees growing and spreading their foliage to form large canopies, there will be habitats for millions of organisms and the people will not only benefit materially, but will learn to love the bio-diversity. They will treat the bio-diversity as their own and assert their rights. They will reawaken to the truth that their survival depends ultimately on the survival of the bio-diversity. Numerous organisations based in industrial societies of Europe and USA alleges that the destruction of bio-diversity is taking place in tropical countries. Assuming that they are the only people concerned with bio diversity and that they only have the knowledge and expertise to do so, they send their representatives with conservation plans. People in the tropic know only how to destroy it, while those in the North know how to reclaim what is destroyed. We have already experienced the ruinous consequences of their conservation plans, which proceed for the profit motive. They evaluate bio-diversity from the amount of timber and other resources that can be extracted for industrial purposes. So they go for species like teak, eucalyptus and pine, which have the propensity to further reduce surface and ground water, which provide nothing of food and medicinal quality and no animal habitats. The following words of a village elder show a peasant's attitude towards bio-diversity. "Forest is the source of the streams we use for farming and drinking water. We also rely on the forest when we build houses or make farming tools. We preserve the forest so that every year, when we need wood to repair the irrigation system, there is a place to find it. Everyday we need to go into the forest to collect bits of dry wood to use as firewood. We use the forest as grazing ground for our cows and buffaloes and, we collect mushrooms, fruits and vegetables from the forest. When we are sick, we depend on herbal medicines from the forest. We repair our roofs with material from the forest. There we find many of the things we need to make a living. The forest has bestowed kindness on us and we respect it in return." (Re-quoted from Bio-diversity, World Rainforest Movement) Over thousands of years people made use of trees and creepers while preserving them through their cultures and lifestyles. It was not for nothing that rural people were careful not to clear locations with water spouts, streams or even a little moisture. The fact that to this day rural people's fear to use Kumbuk or Mee wood for house building has a deep meaning. In short, rural cultures and lifestyles evolved out of the evolution of nature. Charitha Wijeratne |
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It is intended to set off a movement to reawaken and restore a
province, which in bygone times was comforted by dense flora and fauna but
later became desolate and came to be identified as the 'dry zone'.
