WHERE HAVE ALL THE DRAGON-FLIES GONE ?

 Biodiversity is perhaps the most unacknowledged component of the natural environment, and the attention of policy makers rarely goes beyond trees and animals, if even that. But biodiversity is much more than just trees and animals. It is the building block of nature, without which there would be no nature, or an inhabitable planet. Biodiversity is the extraordinary variety of all living things on earth. It encompasses plants, animals, micro-organisms, fungi and even pathogens, the genetic information they carry, and the complex eco-systems they create. I've learnt this the hard way, and am only just beginning to understand it.

When I acquired my half acre of land in Puranikoti village in 2002, there were only two houses here; the landscape comprised rolling, grassy hillsides with a few apple trees and some deodars and blue pine. My own plot was carpeted with wild daisies, buttercups, lilies and primroses. The place was practically overrun with bees, butterflies, cicadas and dragon-flies, and there was a continuous buzzing sound on sunny days. The birds formed the next level on the foodchain, and were in turn subordinate to the feral cats and pine martins. Purani Koti was a biodiversity hotspot!

Not any more. Most of the land in the village has been built over, the trees felled, the buzzing of dragon-flies replaced with the rasping of jack hammers and saws. To compensate I have planted more than 200 trees on my land, of the fruit and jungle varieties. But it has been of no avail, for trees alone on just one plot cannot create biodiversity. For the lowest tier of natural growth in the area- the grasses,  bushes, ferns, wild flowers, creepers - have all gone, the soil has lost its capacity to store rain and snow or to retain moisture. With the disappearance of this living building bloc of nature, the insects that depended on it have also started vanishing. A few, very few butterflies and bees still delight us but I have not seen any dragon-flies this year: I fear their niche has disappeared and they are gone for ever. In a year or two the bees and butterflies will also abandon this biodiverse wasteland. Which, along with global warming, probably explains why we can no longer grow the fruits- apple, pears, apricot, cherries- that we used to: with the biodiversity gone, there are no insects left to pollinate their flowers or birds to spread the seeds. 

This loss of precious biodiversity is rarely factored into our planning and developmental processes. What is reluctantly considered (at most) is forest or green cover- i.e. number of trees to be felled. These are quantified and valued, the amount paid by the project proponent and twice that number planted as compensatory afforestation. The loss of biodiversity is completely ignored and never compensated for. Some figures from Himachal may better illustrate the point: Himachal's forest area is 37000 sq kms (37 lakh hectares), and  a 2024 study by the Bhopal Institute of Forest management  quantifies its biodiversity value at Rs. 33000 crore PER ANNUM. In other words, the biodiversity contribution value of every hectare of the forests is Rs. 89000/ per annum. Working out its NPV over a typical 25-30 year life cycle of any project, the state should be charging at least Rs. 30 lakhs for every hectare of forest diverted for non-forest use. But this is not done because no value is attached to biodiversity.

This may, however, be changing globally, even as we in India continue to fell millions of trees every year on grandiloquent schemes that will displace the livelihoods of thousands of forest dependent communities but enrich crony oligarchs by a few trillion dollars more. Peru, for example, has become the first country in the world to give legal protection to insects (in this case its famous stingless bees). Recognizing the ecological importance of these tiny pollinators of the Amazon forests which pollinate 80% of the Amazon's tropical fruits, just this month it has enacted a law that recognizes their right to exist, to a clean and intact habitat, to regenerate, and to receive legal representation if pollution, deforestation and projects threaten their survival. Anyone, company or individual, who threatens these rights can be sued and prosecuted.

Similarly, in Wales the river Wye has received legal protection of its "rights of nature" from its catchment to the sea. The new charter recognizes the river as a living ecosystem with intrinsic right to exist, i.e the right to flow, the right to its biodiversity, the right to be free from pollution, the right to regenerate and to a healthy catchment. Any citizen can now go to court to enforce these rights. New Zealand too has given legal status to the Whanganui river. Mount Taranaki has been given legal guardianship through an 8 member Guardian Council consisting of four govt. experts and four tribal representatives: no project, govt. or private can be sanctioned there without the approval of this Council. In the Canadian province of Quebec a town, Terrasse Vaudreuil, has passed a "Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Tree" which recognises that trees are living beings with rights, that life on earth depends on them, and that humans must act "in solidarity and fraternity" with them. This lays the legal groundwork for protecting them in future. In India, the Uttarakhand High Court in 2017 had recognized the Ganga as "a living entity" with legal rights but the ruling was inexplicably stayed by the Supreme Court, and the matter continues in limbo.

The Peru, New Zealand, Canadian and Wales laws are small beginnings in realising the importance of protecting ecosystems and biodiversity as a whole, not just trees and forests in isolation.  One hopes our governments, courts and the NGT take note of these developments, dispel their sense of omniscience, and rouse themselves from their  slumber, sloth and lack of understanding of ecological issues. Then-and only then- will the dragonflies perhaps return to Puranikoti and reclaim what is rightfully theirs.