In Mataram Declaration, Belated Recognition of Indigenous Rights

Jakarta Globe, Kennial Caroline Laia,  Apr 23, 2015

The government is finally getting serious about recognizing Indigenous
groups’ forest rights. (Antara Photo/Ahmad Subaidi)

Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara. Proponents of the rights of indigenous groups have hailed a pledge by the Indonesian government to do more to recognize their stewardship of forests, seen as crucial in efforts to stave off deforestation.

Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar made the so-called Mataram Declaration last weekend in a belated response to a May 2013 Constitutional Court ruling relinquishing the state’s default claims to forested areas settled and used by indigenous groups.

“Long before this, civil society organizations and local communities were struggling for the recognition and protection of customary land,” said Abetnego Tarigan, the executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, or Walhi. “Now the government has shown good faith, and we really appreciate it.”

He said the central and local governments often violated indigenous people’s land rights because the latter lacked title deeds to their land. In many cases, he noted, the people were disenfranchised of their rights, and their land given over to logging, plantation or mining operators.

“There are a few policies that regulate the rights of local communities to the land, such as the 2012 law on customary forests, but they don’t cover the recognition of people’s customary territory, so we need another framework to guarantee it,” Abetnego said. “This declaration should really be a form of political will for all stakeholders to push the recognition and protection of customary forests managed by the people.”

Civic-centered development

At the signing of the declaration on Saturday in Mataram, in West Nusa Tenggara province, Siti said the government and other stakeholders were committed to expediting the process to craft policies that improved the welfare and protection of local communities and conserved the environment.

“These policies are really important,” she said. “President Joko Widodo’s government has indicated that the citizenship concept is a democratic one, in which we seek to bring welfare to the people.”

She said the government was making efforts to involve people, especially indigenous groups, in environmental protection.

“Here, our development must be civic-centered,” Siti said. “This issue has been echoed by the people and environmental organizations, and now the government is listening.”

Under Joko’s 2015-2019 National Mid-Term Development Plan, the administration plans to designate 12.5 million hectares of land for “social forestry,” in which indigenous groups and local communities will commit to sustainable forestry practices, and nine million hectares for agriculture.

“These [social] forests can be developed as community forests, village forests and customary forests,” Siti said, adding that the agricultural land, to be staked out from former logging concessions, would go primarily to subsistence farmers.

Collaborative effort

Siti said it was important for all stakeholders — the central government, regional administrations, civil society organizations and local communities — to work closely together.

“The policy is ready to go, but we can’t do it alone. We need help from other stakeholders to cooperate. For example, I hope the Home Affairs Ministry will help us identify indigenous communities and their problems to ensure that all land is distributed rightly and fairly,” she said.

“We also need civil society organizations to work with the people on mediation, community building and others. Access to welfare for all Indonesians is our responsibility.”

Zudan Arif Fakrulloh, an adviser to the Home Affairs Ministry, said the institution was open to cooperating with the other stakeholders.

“But the identification process isn’t easy. There are a few requirements to meet before we can definitively say that a given community is an indigenous one,” he said. “The process must be really selective. And this is the task of regional leaders.”

Zudan said that for a forest community to qualify, it would have to show some kind of environmentally sustainable practice in its interactions with the forest.

“Here we need experts and help from civil society organizations,” he said.

People first

Siti said the new policy, unlike previous ones, prioritized the role of people in economic development through the exploitation of forests and other natural resources.

“I believe the system will be no longer like the past, when government didn’t put the people at the front of its development plans. Now, we must use dialogue in our approach to developing the economy of this country,” Siti said.

West East Nusa’s Deputy Governor Muhammad Amin welcomed the declaration, but said further talks on the issue were still needed between the central government and regional administrations.

“We realize there hasn’t been a regional policy that recognizes the territorial rights of indigenous people. However, with this declaration, we hope that the people will receive greater consideration in the policy-making process,” he said. “Should the synergy run smoothly, we may be able to achieve an environment-oriented development framework.”

Yansen T.P., the head of Malinau district in North Kalimantan, who was among the more than 30 regional heads attending the Mataram Declaration, said an increasing number of regions across the country were beginning to prioritize land rights protections when crafting new policies.

“We’ve been done a lot for several years now to show our support for our environment,” he said. “We have vast areas of natural resources and considerable local wisdom. The forest we have is the forest we must hold on to. We understand that people depend on the forest and they will try to maintain it. But to do that, we in the regional government have to provide them with legal certainty.”

Yansen said he hoped that future investments would “take the side of the people.”

“We don’t need to exploit all of our natural resources right away. We have to think about our children, grandchildren and our future generations,” he said. “Hopefully the central government’s policy will accelerate the recognition of indigenous people’s right to the forest.”

Test cases

Adi Rozal, the head of Kerinci district in Sumatra’s Jambi province, said his administration had designated 12 swaths of forest as customary forests.

“Now we’re waiting for coordination from the central government to issue a policy that fully mandates the forests for use by the local community,” he said.

Mathius Awoitauw, the head of Jayapura district in Papua province, agreed that while the central government had a key role to play, it was local governments that would serve as the test cases for various frameworks on the issue.

“All we need to do to establish nationwide synergy is to hold regular dialogues to test how capable regional governments and people are in managing their forests. In addition, there should be a regulation that truly guarantees the rights of each region to map its own customary forests,” he said.

In prioritizing the rights of forest-dwelling communities, the government has switched from an earlier paradigm that served large corporations, said Chalil Muhammad, the chairman of the Association for Community and Ecology-Based Law Reform, or Perkumpulan HuMa.

“There’s a need to create a scheme to build rights coordination between the central government, regional governments and the people in an effort to prevent forests from rampant exploitation,” he said. “These stakeholders need to change their mind-set. We need to increase human resource capacity and fix existing forestry policies.”

Edited by Hayat Indriyatno

Campaigners Urge U.N. to Block Cambodia Dam Displacement

Naharnet Newsdesk – AFP, 13 Jan 2015

A rights group on Tuesday urged the United Nations to help prevent the displacement of thousands of people, mainly from ethnic minority groups, by a $780 million China-backed dam.

Their plea came a day after Prime Minister Hun Sen said the economic benefits of a series of controversial dams outweigh environmental concerns in a country where a quarter of the population still lacks electricity.

Around 5,000 people -- mostly from marginalised indigenous groups -- could be displaced by the planned 400-megawatt Lower Sesan 2 dam on a tributary of the Mekong River in the northern province of Stung Treng, said the 3S Rivers Protection Network (3SPN).

Villagers are already "being pressured and intimidated into agreeing with the surveys and the proposed resettlement plans", the network said in a statement.

"Thousands of people’s lives will be devastated and destroyed by this project," according to Meach Mean, coordinator of 3SPN which is backed by foreign and local groups.

"Despite its severe impacts, there has been no transparency in the decision-making and no real consultation with the communities in order for them to express their concerns."

The group urged the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights to help prevent rights breaches, and said the dam would damage fish stocks and endanger fishing communities further down the Mekong.

The U.N. has previously raised concerns about the dam while scientists from the United States have joined calls for it to be shelved over fears for the region's biodiversity and food supply.

But Cambodia's government, led by Hun Sen who marks 30 years in power on Wednesday, is backing the Lower Sesan 2 dam which is expected to be completed in 2018.

It also supports the proposed Stung Cheay Areng Dam in Koh Kong province, which campaigners say will flood a valley home to a further 1,500 people.

High utility prices, driven by the lack of supply, are a major obstacle in Cambodia's efforts to attract foreign investment, and the government has struggled to find a way to cut the cost of power.

Nine dams, including several funded by China, are set to open by 2019. Once they are operational the government has said they will generate 2,045 megawatts of power, serving all of Cambodia's provinces.

But Cambodia has been heavily criticized in the past for allowing companies to clear hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest -- including in protected zones -- for everything from rubber and sugar cane plantations to hydropower dams, often for Chinese or Vietnamese companies.

The Yangtze river power station generated 98.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity
 in 2014, the Three Gorges Dam Corporation said in a statement, topping the
2013 production from the Brazilian-Paraguayan Itaipu dam (AFP Photo/Str)

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China's Three Gorges dam 'breaks world hydropower record'

Yahoo – AFP, 2 Jan 2015

The Yangtze river power station generated 98.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity
 in 2014, the Three Gorges Dam Corporation said in a statement, topping the
2013 production from the Brazilian-Paraguayan Itaipu dam (AFP Photo/Str)

Beijing (AFP) - China's Three Gorges dam has broken the world record for annual hydroelectric power production, more than a decade after it became the world's largest power plant, its operator said.

The Yangtze river power station generated 98.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2014, the Three Gorges Dam Corporation said in a statement, topping the 2013 production from the Brazilian-Paraguayan Itaipu dam.

The amount of electricity generated by the Three Gorges plant is roughly equivalent to burning 49 million tonnes of coal, said Thursday's statement, thereby preventing 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

But concerns have been raised about the environmental and human cost of the huge project, which saw more than a million people moved before it opened around a decade ago.

Thousands remain in poverty, and China's government in 2012 made a rare admission that the treatment of migrants relocated for the dam was still an "urgent problem".

Campaign groups say it has damaged biodiversity, threatening the critically endangered Yangtze river dolphin.

The Three Gorges dam is the world's largest power plant by installed capacity with 22,500 megawatts, a third more than Itaipu, on the Parana river.

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Hong Kong farmers protest over tycoon land grab

Yahoo – AFP, Anuj Chopra, 9 Nov 2014

A farmer walks through his field in Hong Kong on October 31, 2014 (AFP Photo/

Nicolas Asfouri)

Hong Kong farming villages bordering mainland China are locked in a bitter struggle against property developers accused of "land hoarding", as resentment of the city's vast wealth gap fuels democracy protests.

Now in their second month, the protests were sparked by Beijing's insistence on vetting candidates in Hong Kong's next leadership elections in 2017 -- but the perceived cosy relationship between the government and the city's powerful business elite is also a key source of anger.

Apartments are situated next to a 

farming field in Hong Kong on October 31, 

2014 (AFP Photo/Nicolas Asfouri)

While developers snap up valuable real estate across the city, soaring house prices and rental costs leave the majority of the population struggling to afford private housing.

Farmers in the outlying New Territories near the mainland border are now joining the push back against the government and developers as their land comes under threat.

A multi-billion dollar government project will see scarce agricultural land developed, and thousands uprooted to make way for townships that officials say will help to meet demand for housing.

But with only a tiny sliver of the proposed 614 hectares area reserved for public housing -- and a bigger slice for commercial complexes as well as private flats beyond the reach of most Hong Kongers -- villagers argue that the project is designed mainly to enrich real estate giants.

"Ordinary people like me can only dream of affording the apartments that will be built here," said Yung King-yu, a 19-year-old resident of Ma Shi Po, one of the affected villages.

"So how will this project meet Hong Kong's housing needs?" asks Yung, who regularly camps at one of the democracy protest sites.

Given the area's proximity to the border, the project has also spawned concerns that it will cater more to wealthy Chinese mainlanders, who are often blamed for driving up Hong Kong property prices.

'Land hegemony'

Hemmed in by skyscrapers towering above tree-lined boulevards, Ma Shi Po is a patchwork of vegetable farms, fish ponds and sprawling pastel-coloured houses –- a novelty in Hong Kong, where millions live in cramped apartments.

But there are also abandoned plots which developers have bought up over the years from local landlords, displacing scores of non-indigenous farmers who moved there generations ago but have no land rights, villagers say.

A woman walks past a gardening field in

 Hong Kong on October 31, 2014 (AFP Photo/

Nicolas Asfouri)

"Hundreds of farmers have had to leave the village because of this land hoarding," said 29-year-old Becky Au Hei-man, who manages a community farm in the village.

"This is a kind of land hegemony," she said, strolling past a fenced plot now owned by Henderson Land Development and overrun by wild undergrowth.

Henderson, led by Hong Kong's third-richest man Lee Shau-kee, is a major land holder in Ma Shi Po, says Liber Research Community, a Hong Kong think-tank focused on urban planning.

Becky says her landlord has sold her patch of land to Henderson, but she refuses to leave.

The property giant declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

Besides Henderson, other land-owning developers in areas surrounding Ma Shi Po include billionaire Cheng Yu-tung's New World Development and Cheung Kong, led by Asia's richest man Li Ka-shing, Liber researcher Chan Kim Ching told AFP.

"Our research shows developers have been quietly stocking up land at low prices since the early 1990s -- years before the government declared the project in 1998," said Chan.

Protesters angered by the government's "pro-developer policies" attempted to storm the city's parliament in June after it hastily approved HK$340 million in funding for the New Territories development project.

Hong Kong's development chief Paul Chan also came under fire after he admitted last year that his family owned vast tracts of land in the development zone.

He shrugged off calls for his resignation and denied any conflict of interest, saying the property had been transferred to his wife's relatives.

'I wake up crying'

The rift between the farmers and developers is indicative of the growing disconnect between the city's privileged establishment and ordinary residents.

Hong Kong's official Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, is among the highest in the world for developed economies and poorer citizens feel increasingly overlooked by the government.

A farmer works on his field in Hong Kong

on October 31, 2014 (AFP Photo/Nicolas

Asfouri)

The city's embattled leader Leung Chun-ying -- who was handpicked by a pro-Beijing committee -- provoked bewilderment recently when he spoke against fully free elections, saying they would result in the poor dominating politics.

At the other end of the scale, Hong Kong's 10 wealthiest tycoons control a combined fortune of around $130 billion and all have interests in real estate, according to Forbes magazine.

But the "have-nots" are desperately trying to make their voices heard. Hong Kong's town planning board has received close to 50,000 public objections to the New Territories housing project, a historic high.

At one town planning meeting farmers delivered impassioned speeches, imploring officials to save their bitter melon and water spinach farms -- a rich habitat for rare migratory birds and flowering plants.

"I wake up in the middle of the night crying," said one emotional farmer.

"I can't abandon my trees, my farm animals, my way of life to live in a skyscraper. This plan is not for me. It's for the rich."

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Protests as traditional chiefs linked to landgrab

Villagers in Cameroon have filed a petition to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights protesting the alleged seizure of over 100,000 hectares of land by influential traditional leaders.

Deutsche Welle, 31 Oct 2014

In the office of Cameroon's National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms, a villager from South West of Cameroon is shouting at the top of his voice. He has come here to complain that chief of Bokwai village in South West Cameroon has seized and sold about 100,000 hectares of land that was ceded to them, a claim that the Chief Kaka Rudolph Mosoke disputes. "It is not true. We were given 11 hectares of land. We came out with about 190 plots and we gave it to families inside the whole village," said Chief Mosoke.

There was not enough land for everyone, Mosoke said, "We promised that when we have other lands we will give it to those who did not have." The land in question was formerly occupied by German colonial masters and then later by the British. After independence the government of Cameroon took it over and created an agro-enterprise called the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC). 40 years later, the CDC handed over the land to the traditional leaders to distribute to the people.

Villagers in South West Camaroon are determined to fight against landgrab

Land not for sale

But local residents believe that the chiefs, who were supposed to distribute the land to the villagers, have been selling it instead. "Administrative officials have taken that land from the people and are selling to individuals who are not indigenes of Fako Division," said Lyonga Marty, a local citizen. "Some administrative officials are grabbing and they are making enormous sums of money," she complained.

Bokwai villagers for whom the land was intended, have now forwarded the issue to Cameroon's Commission on Human Rights and Freedom. Christopher Tambe Tiku, who is an official with the commission in South West Cameroon says they will investigate the matter and recover the peoples land. "Land which is a subject of surrender from CDC can not be the subject of any sale. It is for people who have need for it but were never given the opportunity because the land had been sold," said Tambe Tiku and vowed to investigate the matter and recover the land. "The chiefs are mere trustees holding community land for the benefit of their respective subjects and therefore they have no such power to give or to sale land meant for the various communities," Tambe Tiku said.

Rights organizations in the country have vowed to deal with the matter
and recover the land

Investigation in progress

Following pressure from the national human rights commission and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights in Banjul, the government of Cameroon has now set up a commission to probe the land seizure. Fritz Nassako, secretary general in Cameroon's ministry of state property, land tenure and survey, is also a traditional ruler in the area. "It is being investigated. We suspended all transactions on formerly surrendered land, but this suspension does not mean that we have stopped working," Nassako said. The struggle to recover the land continues with street demonstrations.

Beijing pilots expanded property rights for farmers

Want China Times, Xinhua 2014-10-20

A happy corn farmer in Changchun, Jilin province. (File photo/Xinhua)

China will pilot a set of reforms aimed at giving farmers greater property rights to allow them to enjoy more benefits of the country's urbanization drive.

In an interview with Xinhua on Saturday, vice minister of agriculture Chen Xiaohua said the pilot plan, recently approved by the central authorities, will explore diversified forms of collective ownership of rural land to better protect the interests of farmers.

In China, urban land is owned by the state and rural land is normally under collective ownership. While gradual reforms since the 1980s saw the trading of urban land evolve into a robust property market, land in the countryside has remained largely static as farmers generally have the right to use the land but cannot directly trade or mortgage it.

This scenario has put farmers in a vulnerable position and a key reform meeting last year pledged to gradually change the situation.

While implementing the most strict policies to protect arable land, the country will grant farmers rights to possess, use, benefit from and transfer their contracted land, as well as the right to use land ownership as collateral or a guarantee, said a document released after the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee held last November.

As a follow-up to the document, the latest policy specified procedures to allow farmers to transform their collective rights into a shareholding system.

Chen said the key is to accelerate registration and confirmation of land rights. China started a pilot registration program in 2008, and the country aims to roll out the scheme nationwide in 2015.

Meanwhile, China will actively grant farmers the right to possess and benefit from their contracted land, allow them to give up or inherit land use rights under certain conditions, as well as cautiously roll out experiments on the leasing and mortgaging of the rights, according to Chen.

Giving consideration to the differentiated conditions in east, central and west China, authorities will select several counties to pilot the reforms and aim to complete the work by the end of 2017.

Indigenous peoples need better protection

The UN General Assembly is holding its first World Conference on Indigenous Peoples. Yvonne Bangert from the Society for Threatened Peoples is convinced that Germany needs to do more in this area.

Deutsche Welle, 22 Sep 2014

DW: When we talk about indigenous peoples, how many people are we talking about and in how many countries?

Yvonne Bangert: Various estimates exist, ranging from 350 to 400 million people. There are 7,000 indigenous peoples in total, across all continents. Most people think that there are no indigenous people left in Europe, but there are the Sami (pictured above), who are mainly in Norway.

Why do these ethnic groups need special protection?

Mainly because they are losing their land. It's worth pointing out that indigenous peoples often feel a close connection to the land and the soil they live on. They often talk about "Mother Earth" - which tells you a lot. It's important for their survival - in a spiritual as well as a physical sense - that they have their own land with a degree of autonomy.

But they are increasingly losing that land, as it often contains natural resources like oil, gas, coal and uranium, so there are economic interests there. They often have to defend themselves and have their backs to the wall. They often say "Our land is our supermarket and our church. If we lose it, we lose everything."

How do these people live? Are they reclusive, or perhaps living on reservations, or have some of them adapted to modern urban life?

There is a great variety, just like in the non-indigenous world. For example, in the rainforest areas along the Amazon, people have chosen to live an isolated life, but there are also peoples who live in both worlds - like the Huaorani in Ecuador or the Ashaninka in Brazil.

Among them, there is now a young generation of people who have a good education and who can both uphold the traditional ways of their communities and represent their interests politically and internationally.

As the Society for Threatened Peoples, we also often have guests from these indigenous groups who come to Germany and deal critically with development projects in their country. Through us, they hope to make contact with policymakers in Berlin.

There is the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, also known as ILO 169, which is meant to protect indigenous peoples. Why has it only been ratified by 22 countries?

We suspect that it is very strongly due to the fear that if the indigenous peoples are taken seriously as a negotiating partner on an equal footing, some economic projects can no longer be carried out as might be desired - as some politicians have argued openly, even here in Germany. There is then a fear of financial losses.

So far, Germany has not ratified the Convention either. What is the political mood at the moment?

We are working tirelessly toward the ultimate goal of German ratification. By this I mean not only the Society for Threatened Peoples, but an alliance of numerous NGOs, church aid agencies and other groups who have come together in the interest of ILO 169 and are lobbying for it together with receptive politicians.

There have been several times in the past when the German government was ready to ratify it, but it always failed because of a change of government. We have a good base of support with the SPD and the Greens, and it will surely not be long before the issue comes up again.

What is the German government now doing to ensure the protection of indigenous peoples?

It says that it is committed strongly to working at the UN level. I certainly believe that the colleagues there are working with a sense of goodwill. But there's still little sign that the interests of the affected people are taken seriously.

For example, there's the highly controversial Belo Monte dam in Brazil, where German companies are earning money by building the pipeline, as they are with the pipeline in Ecuador, which was partly finaced by German bank WestLB. The pipeline has burst several times and contaminated the soil.

Another matter is the negotiations on free trade agreements with Canada and the US: Whoever wants to import natural gas from fracking needs to know that this often takes place on Native American land.

This year, for the first time, a World Conference on Indigenous Peoples is being held at the United Nations in New York (22-23.09.2014). How did this come about?

The conference is taking place now because the UN's Second International Decade of the World's Indigenous People comes to an end this year. It's a kind of closing conference, in which we will assess what has been achieved in the last 20 years, what goals we can still aspire to and how things should go from here in terms of organization.

What do you expect from this event? What are you hoping for?

The indigenous speakers are already voicing criticism about the way it has been organized. They wanted to take equal part in organizing it, but they are not sitting together with the others on the podium.

This is about their rights. They have complained that they feel excluded. And although this has happened, we can look on the bright side and hope that a mechanism can be found to allow the structures and working methods of the previous two decades to continue. Mechanisms already exist, but they must be further improved.

Yvonne Bangert works in the Office for Indigenous Peoples of the Society for Threatened Peoples in Göttingen, Germany.

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Indian forest villagers rise up to halt UK firm's bid to clear land for mining

British firm Essar Energy's plans for open cast mine in Mahan forest plans could destroy villages and 5m trees.

The Guardian, The Observer, Gethin Chamberlain,  Saturday 28 June 2014

Children collect flowers in the Mahan forest, which is threatened by a coalmining
project run by the British-registered company Essar. Photograph: Greenpeace

India's new government faces a crucial test of its support for big business over plans to let a British-registered energy company cut down a tract of forest to make way for an open cast coalmine.

Essar Energy – owner of the UK's Stanlow oil refinery – and its partner, the Hindalco company, were granted permission to mine in the Mahan forest of Madhya Pradesh after a lobbying campaign which reached right to the top of the previous government.

In letters to senior figures, including the prime minister and finance minister, they argued that the coal was needed to fuel a power station and aluminium smelting unit that were crucial for the country's economic development.

But the plans have placed them on a collision course with the thousands of people who rely on the forest for their livelihoods and with environmental campaigners, including Greenpeace, who are determined to stop the mine.

Among those directly affected are more than 5,000 members of tribal communities with legal rights to use the forest. Greenpeace claims that the mine would mean the felling of more than five million trees, affecting the livelihoods of as many as 50,000 people, with at least two villages being razed. It has also raised concerns about the effect on wildlife, which includes leopards and sloth bears. Tigers and elephants are reported to be occasional visitors.

The deal is also one of several allocations of mining rights which are the subject of a criminal investigation into corruption. An official audit found many had been significantly undervalued and the political row over what became known in India as the "coal scam" further dented trust in the Congress-led government and helped consign it to defeat in this year's general election.

A similar standoff between the UK's Vedanta and villagers in Orissa over plans to mine bauxite in the Niyamgiri Hills ended in defeat for the company.

But the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) came to power promising to make it easier to do business in India and the billionaire owners of the two firms will expect it to make good on that pledge.

The decision to allow mining to go ahead in Mahan was granted despite staunch opposition from former environment minister Jairam Ramesh.

A final decision is expected shortly but a report to new prime minister Narendra Modi this month from India's powerful Intelligence Bureau, labelling Greenpeace as "a threat to national economic security", suggests the environmentalists face a struggle.

The coal block was allocated by a Congress-led government in 2006 to provide coal for Essar's planned power station and to fuel an aluminium smelter owned by Hindalco. But environmental clearances proved hard to secure and by 2010 the companies were frustrated.

Essar chairman Shashi Ruia decided to lobby prime minister Manmohan Singh personally. On 5 March 2010 he wrote to Singh to "earnestly request" clearance, pointing out that 65% of the work on the power station had been completed and complaining that three years after being allotted the coal block, the company was still waiting on permission from the environment ministry.

The delay, Ruia argued, would result in "avoidable huge loss to us as well as the country". Singh copied the letter to the environment and forest minister, Ramesh, with a note asking him to deal with it "expeditiously".

Six days later, Ramesh met Ruia. In a note of the meeting sent to the prime minister's permanent secretary, he pointed out that "the Mahan coal block should never have been allowed in the first place" and that giving permission for mining would "open up a Pandora's box which we should avoid at all costs".

Undeterred, Ruia tried again. On 16 August 2010 he wrote to Singh to update him on progress with construction of the power station and to ask again for clearance. "I would be very much grateful if necessary instructions are given to the Hon Minister of Environment and Forests to expedite necessary forest clearances at the earliest."

Ramesh refused to bend. In a letter dated 8 July 2011, he wrote that he was unable to agree to clearance for the project and was particularly concerned that the coal block lay in the catchment area of the Rihand reservoir. Instead, he suggested that the power plants be supplied by the Sohagpur coalfield.

In the letter, Ramesh said that he had taken into consideration that the companies had already invested about £360m in the power plants and that the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh had appealed to him twice to permit it on the grounds that it would boost economic activity in the state. But he complained that the investment had taken place without clearance and that "fait accompli has become far too common in forest and environmental clearances".

Shortly afterwards, he was switched to the ministry of rural development. A year later, his decision was reversed and in-principle approval was granted. In February this year, the project was given the green light. Even then, the decision came with conditions, among them the need for a resolution from the representatives of those living in the area – the gram sabha – supporting the project.

But the resolution, passed on 6 March 2013, is hotly contested. It contains the signatures of 1,125 people, although local campaigners say there were only 184 people present at the meeting. Greenpeace claims nine of the "signatories" are dead and has produced death certificates for two of those named. Several people have come forward to insist their signatures were forged. Among them is Kripanath Yadav, 36, of Amelia village. .

"Mahan forest is my provider, protector and God," he said. "I was born in the forest and I am aware that our constitution bestows on us rights on our forest.

"My signature along with several others including some people who are dead were forged during a gram sabha which was held to take people's consent on Essar's coalmine. "We don't want the mine, the jobs or the compensation that Essar tries to lure us with." Officials have promised a fresh vote in the next month.

Last month the former coal secretary PC Parakh was questioned for two days by detectives about a number of allocations, including the Mahan block, but no charges have yet been filed.

Priya Pillai, senior campaigner with Greenpeace India, accused the company of wanting to press ahead at any cost. "There's a lot at stake for the company, therefore it seems they want to build their mine even if it means the law of the land is bypassed," said Pillai.

It is not just environmental issues that have dogged Essar of late. The company's decision to delist from the London Stock Exchange and take itself private upset institutional shareholders, which included Standard Life, Scottish Widows and at least two UK local authorities. Many investors were angered by a deal that they argued undervalued the company and left them millions of pounds out of pocket. The company share price stood at 420p when it initially floated in 2010 but the minority shareholders were offered just 70p when it delisted in May.

But Ramakant Tiwari, CEO of Mahan Coal, said the companies had been waiting since 2006 for permission, had invested heavily in the project and had stuck to the letter of the law.

"In such a scenario, it was but natural for both companies to represent their case before the government."

As forests are cleared and species vanish, there's one other loss: a world of languages

A new report shows a direct link between disappearing habitats and the loss of languages. One in four of the world's 7,000 spoken tongues is now at risk of falling silent for ever as the threat to cultural biodiversity grows

The Guardian, The Observer, John Vidal, Sunday 8 June 2014

A Nenets reindeer herdswoman in Russia's Arctic region. Photograph: Staffan
Widstrand/WWF (click on picture for graphic depicting global language loss)

Benny Wenda from the highlands of West Papua speaks only nine languages these days. In his village of Pyramid in the Baliem valley, he converses in Lani, the language of his tribe, as well as Dani, Yali, Mee and Walak. Elsewhere, he speaks Indonesian, Papua New Guinean Pidgin, coastal Bayak and English.

Wenda has known and forgotten other languages. Some are indigenous, spoken by his grandparents or just a few hundred people from neighbouring valleys; others are the languages of Indonesian colonists and global businesses. His words for "greeting" are, variously, Kawonak, Nayak, Nareh, Koyao, Aelak, Selamt, Brata, Tabeaya and Hello.

New Guinea has around 1,000 languages, but as the politics change and deforestation accelerates, the natural barriers that once allowed so many languages to develop there in isolation are broken down.

This is part of a process that has seen languages decline as biodiversity decreases. Researchers have established a correlation between changes in local environments – including the extinction of species – and the disappearance of languages spoken by communities who had inhabited them.

"The forests are being cut down. Many languages are being lost. Migrants come and people leave to find work in the lowlands and cities. The Indonesian government stops us speaking our languages in schools," says Wenda.

According to a report by researchers Jonathan Loh at the Zoological Society of London and David Harmon at the George Wright Society, the steep declines in both languages and nature mirror each other. One in four of the world's 7,000 languages are now threatened with extinction, and linguistic diversity is declining as fast as biodiversity – about 30% since 1970, they say.

While around 21% of all mammals, 13% of birds, 15% of reptiles and 30% of amphibians are threatened, around 400 languages are thought to have become extinct in the same time.

New Guinea, the second-largest island in the world, is not just the world's most linguistically diverse place, it is also one of the most biologically abundant, with tree-climbing kangaroos, birds of paradise, carnivorous mice, giant pigeons, rats bigger than domestic cats and more orchid species than any other place on the planet.

Today, both its wildlife and its languages are endangered. According to linguist and author Asya Pereltsvaig, the language of Bo is spoken by 85 people, Ak by 75 and Karawa by only 63. Likum and Hoia Hoia have around 80 speakers, and Abom just 15. Guramalum in New Ireland Province had at the last count only three speakers and Lua is almost certainly extinct, with a single speaker recorded in 2000.

Ironically, Lua is now the name of a successful computer programming language.

More than half of New Guinea's and one in four of the world's remaining languages are threatened, says Jonathan Loh. This compares with estimates that suggest a quarter of all mammals, a third of all sharks and rays and one in seven bird species are endangered.

"There are extraordinary parallels between linguistic diversity and biodiversity," says Loh. "Both are products of evolution and have evolved in remarkably similar ways, and both are facing an extinction crisis."

But exactly why there should be such a close link between languages and biological diversity is unclear, even though it was noticed by Darwin. "Places of high diversity, especially tropical forests, have always been known to have high linguistic diversity, whereas tundra and deserts have low diversity," says Loh. "It is possible in some way that higher biodiversity is capable of supporting greater cultural diversity. The explanation seems to be that both biological and cultural diversity depend on the same environmental factors such as temperature and rainfall."

Conservationists fear that the loss of species due to man's activities is accelerating. And linguists say that the wealth of the world's human languages is now safeguarded by very few indigenous peoples, most of whom live precarious lives in developing countries.

Of the 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, half now have fewer than 10,000 speakers, and these 3,500 languages are spoken by only 0.1% of the world's population – equivalent to a city about the size of London. These eight million people are now responsible for keeping the wealth of human cultural history alive, says the report.

At the other end of the spectrum, because of colonisation, globalisation and the worldwide move to cities in the last 30 years, a handful of global languages increasingly dominates: 95% of the world's population speaks one of just 400 languages, each spoken by millions of people, and 40% of us speak one of just eight languages: Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian and Japanese.

"We are losing the richness of human diversity, becoming more and more similar. The languages we speak define how we think and understand the world," says Mandana Seyfeddinipur, director of the endangered languages archive at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

"The loss of human culture is frightening," says Loh. "Nearly all the threatened languages are spoken by indigenous peoples and, along with the languages, the traditional knowledge of these cultures is being forgotten. The names, uses, and preparation of medicines, the methods of farming, fishing and hunting are disappearing, not to mention the vast array of spiritual and religious beliefs and practices which are as diverse and numerous as the languages themselves."

Loh and Harman argue that if you want to save nature it may be vital to conserve cultures too. "The vast store of knowledge that has evolved and accumulated over tens of thousands of years could be lost in the next 100 years," says Harman. "While linguists have made efforts to archive as many of the endangered languages as possible, and ethnobiologists have attempted to record the traditional use of plants, the most important conservation takes place on the ground as part of a living culture."

"As we lose rare indigenous languages we lose the cultures and all the knowledge that they contain. The knowledge of indigenous people is phenomenal. Conservationists should make use of it," says Loh.

The authors have developed an "index of linguistic diversity" which shows that the fastest declines have taken place in the Americas and Australia. Languages spoken in Africa, Asia and Europe are faring better. For biodiversity, the fastest rates of decline have occurred in the Indo-Pacific region, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.

"Species populations in North America, Europe and northern Asia have been more stable. Biodiversity has declined most rapidly in the tropics, but remained steady in temperate regions.

"However, linguistic diversity has declined rapidly in the new world [Americas] but more slowly in the old world," says Harman.

The explanation for the different speeds of decline, they say, lies with the threats that both languages and species face. "Habitat loss and degradation is the greatest threat for species, and since 1970 most has taken place in the tropics. In the developed world most habitat destruction took place before 1970, so biodiversity loss has flattened out.

"Languages do not usually go extinct because an entire population of speakers dies out, but because the speakers of a minority, usually indigenous, language shift to a more dominant language and, typically within a few generations, lose their mother tongue.

"Migration, urbanisation and national unification policies have been the primary drivers of language shift in Africa, Asia and Europe. In the Americas and Australia, the primary driver has also been migration, but where the migrants, mainly European, greatly outnumbered the indigenous populations.

"Ultimately both biodiversity and linguistic diversity are diminishing as a result of human population growth, increasing consumption and economic globalisation which are eroding the differences between one part of the world and another," says the report.

Benny Wenda says the link between human culture and biodiversity is clear because it is the indigenous peoples of the world who have mostly conserved nature.

"If you fell the trees then you destroy human culture as well as the birds of paradise. People depend on the forest and the forest has always depended on us. We are as one."

IT'S ALL TALK …

Around 7,000 languages are spoken in the world, 90% of which are used by fewer than 100,000 people.

Languages are grouped into families that share a common ancestry. English is related to German and Dutch, and they are all part of the Indo-European family of languages. Romance languages, which include French, Spanish and Italian, come from Latin.

2,200 of the world's languages can be found in Asia, while Europe has 260.

The world's most widely spoken languages by number of native speakers and as a second language are: Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German and French.

Some of the oldest languages known include Sanskrit, Sumerian, Hebrew and Basque.

Around 2,500 languages are at risk of extinction. One-quarter of the world's languages are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people.

The United Nations uses six official languages to conduct business: English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Arabic.

Communities isolated from each other because of mountainous geography sometimes develop multiple languages. Papua New Guinea has 832 different languages. In Mexico, there are 68 different indigenous languages, further subdivided into 364 variations.

At least half of the world's population are bilingual or plurilingual. While there are "perfect bilinguals", who speak two languages equally well, most bilinguals do not.

South Africa has 11 official languages – the most for a single country.

The pope tweets in nine languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish, Arabic, Portuguese and Latin.

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