Feature Article

Civil society groups resist Dow Chemical

Pollution kills Europeans than any other factor does. Poor air quality affects crops, ecosystem and children's health; threatens some 700 European species including iconic species such as the

DTE tracks the developments in Sukhomajri which became a model of self-reliant development in the 1980s due to successful management of ecological wealth by HRMS. But the situation has changed now. The forest department has hijacked the forest created by the villagers, while control of water is going into private hands.

Bunga took the sukhomajri story forward The first village to follow Sukhomajri's development model was Bunga, just 30 km away in Haryana's Panchkula district (see timeline: Divergent trajectories).

Government must facilitate, not control The experiences of Sukhomajri and Bunga have a lesson: given the right conditions, external and internal, villages can be self-sustaining. But their inherent

Sukhomajri's forest was responsible for its prosperity. The villagers protected and regenerated a 400-hectare (ha) tract mainly comprising khair trees (Acacia catechu). In the 1980s, the forest

Initially, the management of common property and its resources had never been contentious in Bunga. However, the status of the village's HRMS was threatened when the state government passed the

Inspired by the Sukhomajri model, the Integrated Watershed Development Programme-Hills (IWDP) replicated it on a large scale. Funded by the World Bank, IWDP was initiated in five states in the

Mining is generally followed by a revegetation programme carried by the Forest Department. In such programmes, often exotic plant species are also used along with native tree species. Since the last one and half decades an exotic tree species, Prosopis juliflora has gained tremendous popularity among forest officials due to its easy establishment, low mortality rate and fast growth rate on mine spoil, compared to other woody species.