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Death of a rhino
SEP 01 -
Recently, one more rhino from Chitwan National Park was killed due to electrocution when it tripped over a wire fence on which a farmer had passed electricity to keep the beast away from his paddy. Ever since malaria was controlled in Chitwan valley around early 1960’s, it has been a battleground between migrants from the hills and its native wildlife population, with the latter losing out all along. Even without the poachers for whom rhinos make lucrative targets, these herbivores, tardy in their movement, are easy targets for their human neighbours. Around mid-1970’s the farmers burned the rears of the poor rhinos with flaming torches when they happened to stray into their fields.
In the mid-1980’s, a donor agency commissioned a Greek consultant to look into the problem of wildlife conservation in Chitwan. During a meeting at the National Planning Commission, it was suggested to him that a “buffer zone” be established between the wildlife and their Homo sapiens neighbours to cushion any possible confrontation between the two species. Based on the study of animal roaming habits, particularly those the rhinos, a sufficiently wide corridor (the buffer zone) was established to separate the habitat of the wildlife from the farmlands of human settlements. The was the genesis of what has since been popularly known as the “Buffer Zone Project”, or the “Park and People Project” and later, as “Participatory Conservation Project” implemented in Chitwan and other reserves in the country for some 15 years. It is the norm
that when the buffer zones are privately owned, in the greater interest of the wildlife, the
cropping pattern should be so controlled,
if necessary through legislation, that the rhinos in particular are not lured out of their jungle habitat. Only tree crops or other crops unpalatable or inaccessible to the herbivorous wildlife should be grown.
However, the latest rhino fatality at the hands of that wicked neighbour shows that the so-called buffer zone initiative had failed in its very mission of buffering. In this, the buffer zone project has been no different from other local development projects. In order to convince the human neighbours that it pays to protect the wildlife, 50 percent of the revenue from the wildlife parks are given to the so-called local buffer zone management committees. But the electrocution has shown that this trust has been breached. The limitations built into the very structure of the buffer zone projects—i.e. lack of the buffering effect—has been there all along, and the responsible authorities, either in the Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation (and particularly the Wildlife Management Department), or in the National Planning Commission or in the Foreign Aid Coordination Division of the Ministry of Finance have paid no attention to this crucial lacunae in the structure of the projects they endorsed.
The concerned donor/s too should have made sure that the programme they funded resulted in the desired result in effectively preventing the wildlife from coming into conflict with their beastly human neighbours. However, most such projects, although inspired by altruistic of goals initially, tend to degenerate into ritualistic rut. The donor agencies generally prefer to stay away from promoting game-changing issues such as actually creating an effective buffer zone. The government officials themselves do not want to rock the boat even if it amounted to the dereliction of their duty. For the Chitawan rhinos, all those projects and the many years spent on them have done nothing to buffer them from their evil neighbours. The chronic problem with foreign aid is that there is no accountability attached to the donors and the expatriate hakims could not care less.
Besides, when the finance ministry signed those projects, rhino protection may not have been in their mind at all as they have traditionally been in the habit of signing anything that the donors present to them. Given Nepal’s chronic trade deficit, the finance ministry remains under constant pressure to keep the balance of payment in the black. Their unstated motto seems to be: Money coming into Nepal in any form cannot but be good for the country. So, they give their seal of approval rather indiscriminately, even at the risk of appearing as hypocrites. For instance, the GTZ-promoted Small Farmer Cooperative Programme (SFCL) has been one fine innovation in rural poverty alleviation in the country. The poor farmers, mostly women, are organised into small groups at the grassroots which are federated at the ward level as Inter Groups, and at the VDC level as the full-fledged Small Farmer Cooperative Limited (SFCL) of which there are only 231 in the country at present. A 2003 External Progress Review done by German and Nepali experts had hailed the programme as being “probably one of the most successful - if not the most successful - poverty alleviation programme in Nepal” and recommended for its accelerated replication leading to “400 SFCLs with 400,000 households in four years”. The ensuing inter-governmental consultations between Nepal and Germany too had re-affirmed German support for it.
However, the German official in charge of the programme at the GTZ changed in the meantime, and the new appointee simply did not want to further his predecessor’s agenda. He diverted the funds to a new project, probably as a monument to himself in Nepal, to be implemented in urban areas instead. It was a 180-degree deviation from the mutually agreed agenda between the two governments that was also going to hurt the interest of the poor farmers in this predominantly agrarian country. Repeated requests were made to the Foreign Aid Coordination Division to avert the impending disaster. But in the end, the finance ministry yielded to the new German proposal without even a single question being raised.
If the electrocution of the rhino is any guide, mismanagement of foreign aid in Nepal has long-term repercussions for the society. Given the fact that despite five decades of foreign aid Nepal continues to remain one of the poorest countries in the world, foreign aid is too important a subject to be left to the irresponsible whims of the finance ministry alone. A widely shared norm for managing foreign aid must be formulated on priority basis.
(The author is an anthropologist and has served in the National Planning Commission)
Posted on: 2010-09-02 08:37
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