The current era in India is marked by unprecedented inequality. Wealth and power are increasingly concentrated and centralised in the hands of a few. There is an all-out attack on nature that is characterised by resource-grab by the State and corporations to build large and expensive infrastructure.

Highways are being constructed across India, from the Golden Quadrilateral connecting the four metropolises of Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai to the Char Dham roads in the Himalayas. Forests are being razed, in part, for roads, rail lines, power lines, mining, and industry. Farmlands are being decimated to create Industrial Corridors through them. Large hydroelectric projects are being built in the Himalayas, while the Sagarmala (garland of the sea) project along the coast aims to promote port-led ‘development.’ The islands are being besieged by tourism infrastructure construction and rivers by the Inland Waterways project. 

The idea seems to be to develop infrastructure in order to attract private capital investment and build capitalism further. Practically, this means that infrastructure building is seen as an end in itself. The result is severe erosion of biodiversity, fragmentation of habitats, loss of valuable climate buffers and loss of livelihoods for nature-dependent communities. As many as a third of all endemic species, faunal as well as floral, are facing the threat of extinction. 

India has a large number of people, more than 60 crores (600 million) who are directly working with and dependent on nature — land, water, forest, and sea. There are 14.6 crores small and marginal farmers, 14.4 crores agricultural labourers (a large number of them Dalits, one of the most marginalised segments of Indian society), 27.5 crores forest-dependent people, 2.8 crores fisherpeople, 1.3 crores pastoralists, and 1.7 crores craftspeople. There are almost 6 crores seasonal migrants who constantly move out of their villages for work and then return. These migrant labourers also belong, by and large, to nature-dependent communities.

All of these different groups of people have commonalities — in their need to access land, water (including water bodies in the form of rivers, lakes, wetlands, oceans and seas), and forests and to protect them against the over-extractive large-scale interests backed by the State. Their interests are opposed to the path of so-called development based on capitalist growth facilitated by the Union (central) and State Governments. It is estimated that the size of community-conserved areas is comparable to that of the formal protected area network in the country under national parks and sanctuaries. 

Photograph by James Herenj: Forest protected by the local community in Donki village, Latehar District, Jharkhand, India.

The economic activities of nature-dependent communities are intrinsically linked to the protection of nature. They comprise largely subsistence and small income and are becoming increasingly unviable due to anti-environment economic growth policies that support resource-grab by corporations, which in turn destroy nature and the people dependent on nature. The climate emergency, a global phenomenon that has arisen historically due to capitalism, has become starkly visible in India, and it is the nature-dependent communities who are bearing the brunt of droughts, heat waves, irregular rainfall, floods, and sea level rise. 

We oppose the capitalist mode of development, i.e., the economic policies of the state that are anti-environment and anti-people, leading to marginalisation, dispossession, and poverty, thereby creating a vast underclass, while enriching a few. There is an urgent need to talk about alternative economic models with nature at the centre. 

In its two previous terms, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Government had openly followed an agenda of promoting ‘ease of doing business,’ by diluting laws and policies and weakening institutions that are meant to safeguard the environment and strengthen the rights of nature-dependent communities. In its third term, the BJP has begun an all-out attack on nature and nature-dependent communities for the benefit of corporates. This, however, does not exonerate the previous Union governments that initiated the process of ease-of-doing-business at the cost of nature and livelihoods, or the present State Governments of parties opposed to the BJP which continue it. 

The current trend of unbridled infrastructure construction without ecological sustainability or social equity considerations would lead to large-scale and permanent loss of India’s natural heritage. It is already leading to major natural catastrophes and loss of lives and livelihoods not only of communities directly dependent on nature but also in urban settings. In future elections, nature-dependent communities should be ready with a political agenda that leads to a new economic system that defends their livelihoods and nature. 

All over India, there are many ongoing struggles of nature-dependent communities — of farmers, fisherpeople, forest dwellers, pastoralists, and craftspeople. These struggles form the core of the Campaign to Defend Nature and People (Campaign). We also recognise that these struggles tend to be issue-based and geography-specific, which is a limitation. 

The Campaign therefore seeks to unite the struggles of nature-dependent communities against the extractive system through political action and envisions alternatives that privilege nature instead of considering it as a mere resource to be exploited. There are already many initiatives to demonstrate alternative ways of communities using natural resources sustainably. The Campaign to Defend Nature and People has been initiated with this broad objective. We assert that there is an urgent need to work for alternative ‘developmental’ paradigms that are in harmony with nature and are also socially just. We call upon all movements, activists in various fields, trade unions and political parties to take up this challenge.