The grassLAND is not green

About four years ago, the Karnataka government was accused of diverting 10,000 acres of land for various defence, scientific and developmental projects. The merits or demerits of the land-grab allegations aside, there was a rather interesting and disconcerting element that kept cropping up—that the state government thought there was no issue of note with the land concerned, for it was perceived to be a virtual wasteland, a swathe of unusable land that was now being put to good use. 

Therein lies our story, for these were the grasslands of Challakere taluk in Chitradurga district. Therein also lies the bigger picture: that grasslands, except for those like conservationists and activists, are hardly seen or even understood as ecosystems. Any lay person with little or no knowledge of ecology would know that a forest for instance is an ecosystem; that it is a habitat for various species. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of grasslands—except for those people mentioned above, these are seen as lands that are of no use.
 

The state of the grasslands

In simple words, the bad news: grassland ecosystems across India are in peril. Worse is the fact that there are no plans to save grasslands. After all, if you want to save an ecosystem, you cannot do so through knee-jerk reactions in the form of a law here or a rule there: you need to have an over-arching policy in place.

In terms of officialdom in India, the first time that the need for a policy for grasslands to be underlined in a document was in the Report of the Task Force on Grasslands and Deserts that was submitted in 2006 to the Planning Commission of India. This report was significant since it was being taken up at the planning stage.

The very first paragraph in the executive summary of the report had summarised it perfectly and prophetically: "Grasslands and deserts are the most neglected ecosystems by the Ministry of Environment and Forests which looks after biodiversity conservation in India. Protection, development and sustainable use of grasslands are very important for the rural economy and livestock. India has more than 500 million livestock, more than 50 percent of the fodder for this livestock comes from grasslands.

"Many natural grasslands (e.g. wet grasslands of terai, shola grasslands of the Western Ghats, dry grasslands of Deccan) have been converted to plantations, sometimes even in Protected Areas. Some of the most threatened species of wildlife are found in the grasslands and deserts (e.g. Great Indian Bustard, Lesser Florican, Indian Rhinoceros, Snow Leopard, Nilgiri Tahr, Wild Buffalo, etc). Despite the importance of grasslands and deserts for biodiversity conservation, livestock dependency and for poverty alleviation, we still do not have Grassland Development and Grazing Policy in place."

Yes, it is quite a mouthful; but this one para succinctly tells one why grasslands are important and what's the status of these ecologically-fragile habitats. At least, that's what the 10-member task force had outlined in its 32-page report. It's been ten years since the report was submitted. Its seven recommendations were never implemented and the Planning Commission too, for its part, does not exist any more.

A quarter of the area

Grasslands of India occupy about 24 per cent of the country’s geographical area, and are spread across several bio-geographic regions. Between 1954 and 1962, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) conducted grassland surveys, and PM Dabadghao and KA Shankarnarayan in their 1973 work titled The Grass Cover of India classified the grass cover of the country into five major types.

The Sehima-Dichanthium grasslands are spread over the Central Indian plateau, Chhota Nagpur plateau and Aravalli ranges covering an area of about 17,40,000 sq km. The Dichanthium-Cenchrus-Lasiurus grasslands are spread over 436,000 sq km, including northern parts of Delhi, Aravalli ranges, parts of Punjab, almost entire Rajasthan, and Gujarat, and southern Uttar Pradesh. The Phragmites-Saccharum-Imperata grasslands cover about 2,800,000 sq km in the Gangetic Plains, the Brahmaputra Valley and the plains of Punjab and Haryana. The Themeda-Arundinella grasslands are spread over 230,000 sq km in Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The temperate and alpine grasslands are spread across altitudes higher than 2100m and include the temperate and cold desert areas of Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and the Northeast.

Subsequent work by researchers have taken the classifications and documentation forward. The Ecology and Management of Grassland Habitats in India, published by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in 2015, collated many of the findings and listed six major types of grasslands, including a number of sub-types.

So, if grasslands are so ubiquitous and diverse, why do they remain the most neglected of all ecosystems, especially by the ministry concerned? An explanation was provided in the task force report, “Grasslands are not managed by the forest department whose interest lies mainly in trees, not by the agriculture department who are interested in agriculture crops, nor the veterinary department who are concerned with livestock, but not the grass on which the livestock is dependent. The grasslands are the ‘common’ lands of the community and are the responsibility of none. They are the most productive ecosystems in the subcontinent, but they belong to all, are controlled by none, and they have no godfathers.”

The fallout is there for all to see: increased anthropogenic pressures, rampant land-filling, grazing pressures, habitat fragmentation, proliferation of invasive species and impact of climate change.

A worldwide problem

In October 2016, the Living Planet report released by WWF and the Zoological Society of London pointed out that global wildlife populations have fallen 58 per cent from 1970 levels. Deforestation, pollution, overfishing and the illegal wildlife trade, together with climate change, are pushing species populations to the edge. For the first time since the demise of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, the planet faces a global mass extinction of wildlife. It predicted that by 2020, populations of vertebrate species could have fallen by 67 per cent from 1970 levels unless action is taken to reverse the damaging impacts of human activity.

Living Planet 2016 looked at habitats, and devoted considerable space to grasslands. It said, “Grasslands are terrestrial ecosystems dominated by herbaceous and shrub vegetation and maintained by fire, grazing, drought and/or freezing temperatures. Grasslands have come under a high degree of pressure from humans, particularly because these ecosystems are usually suitable for agriculture. As of 2000, 45.8 per cent of temperate grassland area had been converted and is now predominantly used for human activities. Similarly, more than 40 per cent of the Brazilian Cerrado has been converted to agricultural crops.”

The special mention of grasslands was crucial, and reflected the growing concern among scientists and conservationists at the alarming rate at which grasslands have been depleting all over the world. Only a few months earlier, researchers from Australia’s Charles Darwin University had released the findings of a study ‘The underestimated biodiversity of tropical grassy biomes’, which concluded that contrary to popular belief, grassy biomes such as grasslands and savannas are species-rich ecosystems—every bit as biodiverse as rainforests—and yet little attention is being paid to the fact that they are being destroyed at a faster rate.

Caroline Lehmann, who edited the issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B in which the findings were released, spoke of the need to save grasslands in a blog post on the journal’s website, “These biomes were the cradle of human evolution, and in our contemporary world, they support the livelihoods and wellbeing of over one billion people. With the population of Africa alone set to treble by 2050, the continuing pace of climate change, increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations and increasing agricultural development, there is an urgent need to understand the unique ecology of these systems.” And very specifically, “On a global scale, they house an important component of the world’s biodiversity, store 15% of the world’s carbon and play a critical role in regulating carbon and nutrient cycles.”

This study did not point look particularly at India, but did point out that the tropical grassy biomes of mainland Southeast Asia and India had also been extensively cleared, primarily for agriculture.

Protection for grasslands

In recent times, the first to recognise grasslands as critical habitats was recognised by the National Forest Commission, which had been constituted in 2003. In its report, the commission had called for a specific plan to save the four bustard species, which are endemic to India and are grasslands creatures. It had recommended, “To protect the highly endangered great Indian bustard (less than 500 left in the whole world), lesser florican, Bengal florican and other grassland associated flora and fauna, Project Bustard should be initiated. As protection of grasslands would greatly benefit livestock, the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry should also be involved. These bustards are found in at least ten states of India and therefore, it is vital to develop a centrally coordinated and funded scheme.”

The Planning Commission task force had recalled the recommendations, and suggested special schemes for biodiversity conservation of grasslands and deserts. The task force had pointed out conservation loopholes, “In India, we have nearly 95 national parks and 500 wildlife sanctuaries. Most of these PAs are in the forest ecosystems. According the report of the Forest Commission (2006), nearly 40 per cent of these PAs suffer from livestock grazing and fodder extraction. There are only a handful of PAs having grasslands. Notable ones are Velavador National Park (34 sq km) in Gujarat, Desert National Park (3,162 sq km but less than 100 sq km really protected), Kaziranga National Park (>500 sq km, 60% wet grassland), Manas Tiger Reserve (>500 sq km, 40% under wet grassland), Sailana Florican Sanctuary (2.50 sq km grassland) in Gujarat.” It had realised that grasslands remain unprotected unless they are notified as Protected Areas under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 or notified as Protected or Reserve Forest under the Indian Forest Act, 1927.

The best way out would be to treat grasslands as ‘forest land’ for the purposes of the Forest Conservation Act, and impose restrictions on diversion of such lands for non-forest use should be applicable to these critical ecosystems as well. The task force had suggested that the Union government could then invoke Articles 251 and 254 of the Constitution to direct state governments to instruct revenue departments not to divert any grassland identified in the landscape for bustard/florican protection.

The panel’s suggestions were inclusive.  It pointed out that the Draft Grazing and Livestock Management Policy (1994) and the subsequent Draft National Policy for Common Property Resource Lands had made no headway, and given the fact that India has one of the largest livestock populations in the world, it had called for the formulation of a National Grazing Policy. The logic was simple: only livestock is considered as wealth, not the grasslands on which this livestock depends and nor the traditional knowledge that helps maintain this livestock. To protect pastoral communities and their livestock, grasslands need to be protected too.

Last word

It is not without reason that the Planning Commission task force’s report crops up every time that one talks of conservation of India’s grassland ecosystems. Halfway through the report, the panel had remarked, “Grasslands are the ‘common’ lands of the community and while there have been robust traditional institutions ensuring their sustainable management in the past, today due to take-over by government or breakdown of traditional institutions they are the responsibility of none. They are the most productive ecosystems in the Indian Subcontinent, but they belong to all, are controlled by none, and they have no godfathers. Indeed they are often looked at as ‘wastelands’ on which tree plantations have to be done, or which can be easily diverted for other uses. Such diversions often put even more pressure on adjoining ecosystems for grazing and fodder removal, resulting in a cascading chain of degradation.”

To save grasslands, one doesn’t need to do much: just update the 10-year-old report, and follow its path.