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Regenerating sholas and grasslands

In 1981, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) had started an innovative programme. They called it Socially Useful Productive Work (SUPW). We called it Some Useful Periods Wasted. In our adolescent irreverence, we did not quite enjoy the labour involved in digging the soil of the Nilgiris upper plateau to plant saplings of eucalyptus. But then there was the desire to contribute to the larger purpose of afforestation of the hills that had hosted us for our school life.

This week, I was back at the Lawrence School, Lovedale, to watch students plant grassland species from the native shola-grassland ecosystem of the Nilgiris in a patch near the main water stream that supplies the institution. The students worked with gusto.

The students of Lawrence School, Lovedale plant native grassland species.

Having lived through a dry 2016, they were aware that the shola-grassland ecosystem provided the lifeline of water. Within the limited understanding of teenagers facing multiple pressures, they were aware of the linkages. In the Whatsapp group that links my classmates, there were jokes asking whether it was Shola aur Shabnam, caricaturing the name of a 1992 Bollywood movie starring Govinda and Divya Bharati.

It is not as if we did not live through weather-related highs and lows during our period in school. In 1979, the Nilgiris faced the brunt of a cyclonic storm. Strong winds whistled through the valleys and it rained heavily for days. There were landslides in different parts of the hills. Many of the highway culverts that were rebuilt after the storm had the ‘For 1979’ painted on them for years. The bund that impounded the water of the Lovedale Lake breached, turning the lake back to what it was originally – a wetland. There was also a dry period, when water in taps had run dry.

Even though we trekked extensively in our campus and in other parts of the hills, we mistook the eucalyptus, wattle and pine stands to be the original forests of the Nilgiris. So much so, that when the then headmaster announced a project to extend the girls school building, one alumnus protested the deforestation that would cause. In fact, the extension project would have removed a few eucalyptus trees – a native species from Australia.

The Nilgiris had not yet felt the resource pinch. Living in a period of low population and a rich natural resource base, nobody told us that what the eyes saw was not reality. We did not know of the process that was already underway for converting grasslands into softwood plantations and shola forests into tea plantations.

This was an institutionalised process that had begun in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Tamil Nadu Government in its push for promoting industrialisation had started the process of systematically planting pulpwood trees on grasslands, which were deemed to be wasted lands. Eucalyptus and wattle were grown, harvested and sold to rayon and paper mills in the plains. The branches from these trees were also good as firewood for the local population.

The second prong of the institutional attack on the environment was when shola forests were converted to a tea corporation, to employ the Tamil tea workers repatriated from Sri Lanka after the accord signed between Lal Bahadur Shastri and J.R. Bhandaranayake in 1966.The State’s actions signalled a go-ahead for everybody else.

We did not know in our school days was that the Nilgiris was home to the unique shola-grassland ecosystem in the upper plateau, which constitutes 1,800 sq.km out of the total 2,400 sq.km of the district. This ecosystem is found only in the higher reaches of the southern Western Ghats and works in combination with each other. There are grasslands on the hills and the evergreen shola forests in the valleys and groins of the hills.

A typical shola-grassland ecosystem of the Nilgiris.

The sholas and grasslands are climax vegetation types, i.e. they have reached the logical conclusion of their evolutionary process. It is believed that it is because of the ground frost in the upper plateau of the Nilgiris no native tree species grow on the grasslands. Trees grow only in the protected valleys. 

While the grasslands let the rainwater and the moisture in the fog run off, in the valleys the sholas hold on to this water in black, peaty soil formed from centuries of decaying leaf litter. Like a sponge, the peat bogs release water all through the year in the Nilgiris.

If the water reservoirs in the Lawrence School at Lovedale have water for the local needs, it is because of water flowing in the stream that feeds it all through the year. The stream, in turn gets its water from the shola patch upstream. It is estimated that there are around 1,100 streams in the Nilgiris, originally starting from the shola-grassland ecosystem of the upper plateau. In turn, they join to form four rivers – Bhavani, Moyar, Kabini and Chaliyar. While the first three join the Kaveri, Chaliyar flows west from the Nilambur forests to meet the Arabian Sea near Kozhikode.

Rivers, after all, are drainage channels. They carry the water that fall in their catchments into the sea. More rain, more flow; it is as simple as that. It is the ecological health of the forests in the catchment that determines whether a river will be perennial (flow throughout the year) or seasonal (flow only when it rains).

Thus the stream originating from the shola forest patch in Lovedale has an importance beyond meeting the local needs – it helps provide (in its minor way) the Kaveri its perennial water flow. In addition to fighting with Karnataka for not releasing enough water in the Kaveri during dry years, Tamil Nadu can strengthen the flow in the catchments originating within its boundaries. The shola-grassland ecosystem holds the key for this. 

The sholas and grasslands also regulate the temperature regime of upper plateau along with its water flow. Shola patches are a few degrees cooler than the adjoining patches. It is not so under eucalyptus, wattle and pine stands. Even though located within the tropical latitudes, the upper plateau of the Nilgiris provides a temperate climate. It is a sky island protecting a unique plant and animal life.

If the temperate climate changes into tropical, the Nilgiris will lose its sky island status. Some of the flora and fauna in the upper plateau have their closest relatives in the Himalayas. For instance, the Nilgiri Tahr is a cousin of the Himalayan Tahr. The Nilgiri Rhododendron also shares a similar relationship with the Himalayan Rhododendron.

The Nilgiri Rhododendron is a cousin of the Himalayan Rhododendron.

The high altitude of the plateau is only partially responsible for the temperate climate profile. If it was the only factor, the Nilgiris would have continued to be cool all through the year. Instead, it is warmer during most of the years and bitingly cold during the winter months. These extremes could be an indication for climate change in the hills. The impacts of the global-scale climate change are aggravated by the destruction of the sholas and grasslands.

A combination of changing land use patterns and the changing climate are changing the man-animal interface on the plateau. We did not have monkeys and gaurs in school during our time in school.

The idea of regenerating the shola and grassland in a small patch within the school campus originated from a batch of alumni who completed their course in 1981. The group provides core funding and guidance for the project. Headmistress Sangita Chima, a few teachers and students enthusiastically support the work. During their free hours, the students work in the field planting the grasses.

Unlike us, these students are leaving school with an understanding of what the shola-grassland ecosystem is, and how it contributes to conservation of the Nilgiris environment and from there adjoining parts of peninsular India. They would opt for different careers in their lives. But somewhere this understanding will form a foundation layer on which they will build other domains of knowledge and expertise.

In 1981, we were right and the eminences at the CBSE were wrong. The time we spent planting eucalyptus saplings were, after all, some useful periods wasted.

A tale on the hills

If you are a Google Earth aficionado you will empathize with my excitement of seeing satellite images of mountains and valleys in 3D and traveling through them. In spite of a slow internet connection this week in Cotonou, Benin, I was standing on top of Anamudi, the tallest peak in the Western Ghats of India.

The Idamalayar valley as seen from Anamudi

The pointer was showing north and I could see a deep gorge running east-west beyond the peak. I stepped beyond the ridge, into the gorge, turned my pointer west and flew in through the forested valley. It was like watching an IMAX movie at Prasad's in Hyderabad. I went down steps in the valley, into the midlands, and there the river widened into a reservoir. The legend on the map said Idamalayar Dam.

I did a U-turn with the pointer and headed back to the mountain. On the way back I noticed the walls of this valley were far steeper than the adjacent ones. This did not look like a gully, formed due to erosion, turning into a river valley. It seemed that the Idamalayar river was flowing through a rift valley formed along a geological fault. I checked my presumption on Google, and I was right. The earth must have cracked - some day in geological past - and the same force that thrust the mountain up created a crack for the river to flow.

When I was a young boy, I used to gaze at the Palghat Hills in the Western Ghats from my grandmother's house. The mountains had moods. They stood tall and cheerful on bright, sunny days, rocks reflecting sunlight and the forests taking a darker shade in contrast. They turned gloomy as they stood to hold back the monsoon clouds.

I could only imagine what was beyond the ridge. There are no limits to a boy's fantasy but the human eye has limitations. Today, sitting at my desk in West Africa, I can see far beyond the ridge on my computer. My knowledge is portable - I can see it on a smartphone in any part of the world. I notice that the Palghat Hills are contiguous to the Nilgiris, where I went to study in my teens. I also understand that the ridge that I thought to be the tallest hid taller mountains behind them.

The Western Ghats form a mountain chain 1,600 km in length, that runs parallel to the west coast at around 150 km distance. It runs through the states of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and though it has an average height of around 4,000 feet (1,200 meters), it has ridges rising above 8,000 feet.

The mountains, which form the uplifted edge of the Deccan Plateau, intercept the rain-bearing monsoon clouds as they enter from the west coast into the Indian subcontinent. This leads to high precipitation along the mountains, with some regions getting between 5,000 to 7,000 mm of rainfall in a year. This has led to some of the thickest and most biodiversity-rich forests in India to be located in the stretch.

The Western Ghats are home to evergreen, semi-evergreen, moist deciduous and dry deciduous forests. In addition, the mountains have the unique shola-grassland ecosystem in the upper plateau. This consists of grasslands on the hill slopes with evergreen forests of short-statured, close-canopied trees (shola forests) in the groin of the hills.

The shola-grassland ecosystem ensures that the streams flowing out of the small folds in the mountains have water throughout the year.  This system constitutes the ‘overhead water tanks’ for the plains of peninsular India, feeding into three major rivers – Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery – and hundreds of smaller rivers. For instance, the state of Kerala itself has 44 rivers.

In exactly a year from now, in October 2012, there would be international attention on the Western Ghats when India hosts the 11th Conference of Parties (COP-11) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at Hyderabad. The diversity of life on the mountains is rich, and it is among the biodiversity hotspots in the world. It has over 5,000 species of flowering plants, 139 mammal species, 508 bird species and 179 amphibian species. Many undiscovered species and at least 325 globally threatened species occur in the Ghats.[i]  

One of the framework conventions that emerged from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (more popularly known as the Rio Summit) in June 2002, the CBD recognizes biodiversity as a sovereign property, and aims to promote its conservation, sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits.

Since CBD is only a framework convention, the member countries require national policies and laws to put into effect its principles. India was one of the earliest countries to discuss and enact a legislation to protect the country's biological diversity. The Biological Diversity Act of 2002 was gazetted on 5 February 2003. Through the Act, the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) was established in Chennai in 2003, and the establishment of similar institutions at the state and local level was recommended.

The Biological Diversity Act mandates that the country's biological diversity and traditional knowledge associated with it cannot be transferred out of the country for research or commercial gain without prior approval of the NBA. Similarly, for commercial utilization within the country of biological resources or knowledge, permission has to be obtained from the relevant state biodiversity boards.

The NBA or the state biodiversity boards, while giving permission can order that a part of the benefit from the commercial use of the biological resource or the knowledge has to be shared with those groups or communities that helped to preserve the resource and develop the knowledge. The Act has teeth, and contravention is punishable with imprisonment and/or monetary fine.

This Act strengthens the other forest-related legislation such as the Indian Forest Act, Forest Conservation Act and the Wildlife Protection Act.

As a journalist working with the Hindu Business Line newspaper, I closely followed the evolution of the Biological Diversity Act from 1997 to 2002. It was an interesting process, that had many consultations with the public in which citizen's groups, environmental activists, tribal-rights activists, foresters, bureaucrats, parliamentarians were involved. More or less at the same time there were discussions for the development of  the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act of 2001.  I wrote about the interface between these two Acts.

The biodiversity of the Western Ghats and the ecological services that the mountains provide, however, is far greater than what can be signified by legislation.  These ecological services are not only to the communities living in the hills but also to those living in the plains of peninsular India.  If the rivers do not carry enough water, it can adversely impact the downstream towns and cities and thereby India’s economic growth.

With new species of plants and animals still being discovered in the forests, the source of a wonder ingredient or molecule for medicine could be lost before being found.

While the forests in the Western Ghats have the power to reduce climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide, the mountain ecosystem can also be seriously and adversely affected in a warming world. In the higher plateaus of the Ghats , the climate is temperate even though they stand in tropical latitudes. A warmer world would mean the loss of these temperate pockets including its unique biodiversity. Economically, this could result in loss for the plantation industry – tea, coffee, temperate vegetables and fruits, etc. – that provide livelihood to millions and export revenue to the GDP.

As I zoomed out from Anamudi Peak on Google Earth and looked at the Western Ghats in their entirety, I noticed that the patches of green were fragmenting and the urban centers were expanding. Perhaps those living in the cities and towns do not realize that the mountains and forests give far more to them then what they are aware of in their day-to-day lives.

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[i]Myers N, Mittermeier RA, Mittermeier CG, Da Fonseca GAB and Kent J. 2000. Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities.Nature, 403:853–858. 

A river of twists and turns

River Volta is to Ghana what Ganga is to India. It is the icon for the country.

Starting in Burkina Faso and running through the length of Ghana, the Volta twists and turns through the landscape. The name "Volta" (turn), was given by the Portuguese due to these twists. The Black Volta and the White Volta are the main tributaries, with a smaller Red Volta joining the White.

In 1965, the Ghanaian Government built the Akosombo Dam, thereby creating one of the largest man-made reservoirs in the world. The reservoir stretches from Akosombo to Yapei, 400 km north. The hydro-electric project at Akosombo provides power to Ghana, as well as Togo and Benin.

The ferry Dodi Princess does a day trip on weekends, taking tourists to an island in the reservoir and back to Akosombo.

An Indian river-log

The Narmada is the most beautiful river I have seen in India. No, not at the rail bridge at Hoshangabad; that is a blur of steel girders. I absorbed the Narmada while walking along the rocky gorge from Kevadia Colony (the temporary town for the construction workers for the Sardar Sarovar dam) to Bamni in 1991.

Flowing through the rift valley, the Narmada has the Vindhyas flanking its north and the Satpuras in the south. The river valley is a platform of sharp-edged rock, and I trekked gingerly to avoid a slash on my feet and shins. The mountains are not tall – a few hundred feet at the most – but they rise sharply from the line where the earth broke millions of years ago.

I was representing the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) at a meeting organized by Medha Patkar at Bamni. The Narmada movement was strong in those days and the meeting had drawn many people from different parts of the country. We slept on the sloping ground while the river rippled gently below us. I saw stars in the sky, something that I had not seen for years in the smoggy Delhi.

We went to the river to bathe in groups. There were gharials (alligators) in that part of the river. There was this guy, more or less my age, who sang full-throated, baul-like as we held out our towels to dry in the damp river breeze. He had long hair, which he tied loosely in a turban. He had a PhD in environmental toxicology from Cornell University. When we climbed back to the hill top the smell of warm khichdi from the thatched kitchen pushed against the river breeze. We ate in leaf plates.

Chambal has alligators on its banks. It is muddy, washing the ravines continuously. The river takes a turn before the rail bridge. Whenever I crossed the river by train in the evenings, I have loved the brown of the river silhouetted against the orange of the setting sun.

The river Bhagirathi, which later goes on to become the mighty Ganga, was mucky as it reached Tehri town. The point where I stood, then, is below the water of the Tehri reservoir today. I traveled upstream by bus to Silyara village which is on the banks of the river Ramganga, which later joins Bhilangana, which in turn joins Bhagirathi at Tehri. On our return, my friend and I were 45 minutes early at the bus stop. A delay would have meant loss of half a day to catch the next one to Tehri. While waiting we drank tea from the only shop in the village. There was nothing extraordinary about the milk or the tea leaves, but the glacial-melt water from Ramganga ensured that my tongue remembers the taste after 20 years.

Scores of Ramgangas join the Ganga by the time it reaches Rishikesh and Haridwar. It carries the copious amount of swift-flowing water that is needed to wash away the sins of the hundreds of thousands of people who bathe in the river every year.

River Indiravati drains the moist deciduous forests of the Bastar Plateau in Chhattisgarh, curves and joins the Godavari. At Dhantewada, two tributaries join Indiravati. One flows clear and serene, and the other flows rapid and red, bringing down ore-rich soil from the Bailadila iron ore mines.

Crossing the Godavari at Rajahmundry is like crossing the ocean. The bridge almost never ends. In 1993, I was in this area covering a story on a gas well blowout in the Komarada region of the Godavari delta. In the evening I sat in the balcony of my hotel room and watched the solitary lights of the ferries fade as they carried passengers to the island villages in the river and across.

I have seen the Godavari in Ramagundam, Basar and near Shirdi. She is at her most magnificent at Rajahmundry. After this point the river breaks into multiple distributaries of the delta, creating hundreds of islands or lankas.

Beyond the Grand Anicut at Trichy, the Cauvery too splits into a delta. The land between the multiple branches of the river has traditionally been the most important rice growing region in Tamil Nadu. The water flowing into the delta has also been the bone of state’s constant contention with Karnataka. Driving through the winding roads of the delta, I realized that there was space for everything except automobiles on the tarmac. Harvested paddy stalks were laid out to dry and thresh, people were sitting and working on it, dogs, cows, crows, everything but cars. With thousands of years of agricultural history, the delta region is also the home to delicious cooking.

In the Nilgiris I was in the land where rivers began. There is no shola from which a stream is not born. More than thousand such streams join to form the four rivers from the mountain block – Bhavani, Moyar, Kabini and Chaliyar. While the first three in turn join the Cauvery, Chaliyar flows westwards into the Arabian Sea.

A river is only a drainage channel through which rain water flows into the sea. While Bhavani has water flowing throughout the year, the adjoining Noyyal basin, draining the dryer slopes of the hills, runs dry most months. Modern-day engineering is required to move water from the Siruvani and Bhavani rivers to be moved to Coimbatore and the other industrial towns in the Noyyal basin.

I could not have grown in the Thrissur-Palghat region without Bharatapuzha etching a long line on my psyche. I love to ride along the river every time I travel by train into Kerala. I had bid goodbye to my father and father-in-law on the banks of this river.

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After two decades I saw the full-throated singer from the Narmada valley: on YouTube. Rahul Ram is the lead singer for the band Indian Ocean. When I heard his voice crack at the highest note of arey ruk ja re bande, I remembered the chitter-chatter of the river, the breeze on my face, the stars in the sky and the smell of Medha’s khichdi.

A temple by the river

The rivers that flow west into Kerala from the Western Ghats break into distributaries and backwaters. The Sri Rama temple at Triprayar in Kerala sits beautifully on the banks of one such river. It is believed that the Sri Rama idol was the one used for worship by Sri Krishna in Dwaraka and had drifted southwards through the Arabian Sea and was picked up by the fishermen from the sea coast nearby.