Small-scale, traditional fishing communities in India are being increasingly marginalized by exclusionist conservation measures in protected areas and also by destructive developmental activities along the coast, participants at a recent workshop in New Delhi asserted.
Organized by the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF), the two-day workshop, titled “Fishery-Dependent Livelihoods, Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity: The Case of Marine and Coastal Protected Areas in India”, was held during March 1-2, 2012.
The workshop provided a forum for dialogue between government agencies, fishing-community representatives, non-governmental organizations, environmental groups and scientists. The fishing-community representatives reported severe loss of livelihood in protected areas (PAs) like the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve, the Gahirmata (Marine) Wildlife Sanctuary and the Gulf of Mannar (Marine) National Park and Biosphere Reserve.
Discussions at the workshop led to a consensus on the need to balance conservation and livelihoods based on sustainable use of resources. Specifically, the National Fishworkers’ Forum (NFF) called for:
Restoration of fishing rights in marine and coastal national parks and sanctuaries established under the Wildlife (Protection) Act (WLPA), 1972
Legal recognition of the rights of fishing communities to marine and coastal natural resources and to protect and manage them along the lines of the Forest Rights Act
Clear guidelines on operationalizing the provisions in the WLPA related to protecting the occupational interests of fishermen and on the right to innocent passage in PAs till all fishing rights are recognized and restored under the WLPA
The non-inclusion of all future marine and coastal PAs under the present WLPA in view of its inappropriateness for the purpose, and a consideration of other suitable legal instruments
Establishment of a formal co-ordination mechanism between the environment and agriculture ministries to ensure that the livelihood interests of fishing communities are protected in national parks and sanctuaries
A review by the environment ministry of the extent to which marine and coastal PAs are consistent with the Programme of Work on Protected Areas (PoWPA) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), in particular, with the provisions related to governance, participation, equity and benefit sharing, prior to CoP 11 in Hyderabad in October 2012
A consultative process, and an integrated, holistic framework for conservation of marine and coastal biodiversity that regulates particularly the large-scale environmental impact of ports, power plants, oil and gas exploration, tourism, etc.