Environmental Activism is Going Online Amid COVID – And Winning

From movements in Assam and Goa to the Fridays For Future campaign against the EIA notification, we can take hope.

Online environment campaigns in Goa, Assam and against the draft EIA notification 2020 are proving very successful.

(Photo: Arnica Kala/The Quint)

The recent controversy over the blocking of environmental group Fridays For Future India’s website – thankfully resolved now after a bizarre saga involving the invocation of UAPA terror charges – has created an opportunity to examine and appreciate the environmental campaigns that have spread like wildfire across the internet in COVID-19 India.

These movements present a new and unique exercise of Indian democracy. With the pandemic rendering institutions unable to discharge their mandates in accordance with the due process of law, and conventional physical protests out of the question, young citizens have begun to engage with the powers that be, almost entirely through social media and the internet, demanding their right to a clean and healthy environment.

Largely driven and managed by young students, conservationists and artists – with the support of lawyers and other members of civil society – these movements have in a short period of time managed to generate an impressive impact.

AGAINST ILLEGAL MINING IN ASSAM

The movement against the illegal coal mining by North-Eastern Coalfields (a subsidiary of CIL) in Dehing Patkai Elephant Reserve, started as a series of open letters with long lists of signatories to the Prime Minister, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the Assam state executive.

The campaign managed to create enough of a buzz that not only did the Gauhati High Court take suo moto cognizance of the matter and issue notice on June 4, but it also prompted the Chief Minister of Assam to upgrade the existing wildlife sanctuary to National Park status.

THE SAVE MOLLEM MOVEMENT IN GOA

In Goa, the “Save Mollem” movement, driven by a committed team of local ‘Goenkar’ conservationists and artists, has been similarly inspirational.

In a time where meeting one’s own kin has become a risky enterprise, it has managed to channel the support that exists in Goa for environmental causes (already a restricted interest group) in order to generate constructive dissent against three proposed infra projects through one of the ecological nerve-centres of the state: Bhagwan Mahaveer Wildlife Sanctuary and Mollem National Park (a contiguous forest area).

These 3 projects were granted wildlife approval by the National Board for Wild Life (NBWL) over video-conferencing, and, like the many other applications during this lockdown period, have suffered from less-than-due appreciation of their contexts and impacts.

The issues and oversights, which have been a recurring feature of the meetings of the Standing Committee of the NBWL, were pointed out to the authorities, in various open letters addressed to them by the Goenkar activists.

Judicially, both the Central Empowered Committee of the Supreme Court (constituted in the Godavarman case – a milestone in India’s complex journey of forest governance), as well the Bombay High Court, have issued notice on these apparent departures from due process, in response to petitions filed by the Goa Foundation.

But the bigger win, perhaps, has been the spate of support by both sitting and opposition MLAs, for the movement – in response to the active citizen engagement, they have written to the CEC and even the Prime Minister, about the potential livelihood and ecological impacts which have been omitted from consideration while granting the approvals.

THE BATTLE AGAINST THE DRAFT EIA NOTIFICATION 2020

The most visible movement has of course been against the draft EIA Notification 2020.

Through this notification, the as-yet tacit and piecemeal pro-business policy stance of the Environment Ministry has now acquired an institutional, formalised structure. The draft notification downgrades a large number of project categories to a status which requires little-to-no application of mind for approval, even in ecologically sensitive areas.

Take for example the fact that under this draft notification, even something as specific as proposed ‘aerial ropeways in ecologically sensitive areas’ will be exempt from the general protection which existed for any kind of project in such areas.

This is not to say that a pro-business stance is necessarily bad, or that no aerial ropeway should ever be built in such areas, as some more radical conservationists might say. The issue is that the Environment Ministry is meant to be the informed, dialogic voice in the developmental process – the check and balance to ensure that development and ecological health and conservation go hand in hand.

It is intended to perform the same critical role as the opposition in legislature, or of the two advocates in an adversarial litigation – the honing and achievement of a higher and better truth, through a dialectical method. If the Environment Ministry itself adopts and panders solely to the business and developmental arguments, who then will be the balance?

It is the absence of such a consistent policy to guide the statutory functions of the Environment Ministry which these movements aim to fill, through informed and active engagement of citizens who have a stake in these decisions.

This forms the bedrock of the principle of public consultation, which is enshrined in most of our environmental laws – the EIA Notification of 2006, the Forest Rights Act, and the NGT Act of 2010 (whose principle of locus standi has incorporated this, the definition of a ‘person aggrieved’ having been given a wide and purposive interpretation by the Tribunal), to name a few.

HOW THE BLOCKING OF FRIDAYS FOR FUTURE’S WEBSITE SHOWS ONLINE ACTIVISM IS WORKING

It is a Fundamental Right (to a clean environment) that these groups are exercising and requiring from their elected representatives, including the campaigns for driving constructive dissent against the draft EIA Notification, 2020, which have most recently been in the news for their summary removal from the internet, on July 10, with no due process followed or reasons given.

On 8 July the ISP of one of these websites – FridaysforFuture.in (FFF) – was served with a notice under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, on a complaint from the Environment Ministry, alleging the site was being used for a conspiracy to engage in terrorist activities.

This is alarming on a number of counts.

• First, that the Ministry is threatened enough by any kind of opinion which does not exactly match its own.
• Second, that this is the hallmark of public decisions whose motivations cannot be defended publicly.
• Third, because a law which was enacted purportedly for containing and punishing terrorists, has so far been used to detain and restrain poets, students (including a pregnant girl) and civil society workers. The trend is worrisome, and it seems that anyone willing to raise their voices against the Environment Ministry are not far off from making this unenviable list.

The new-ness of these movements has the government also scrambling in its response – the UAPA notice which was served on FFF has been withdrawn and the website is back up, following a furious public backlash against the fiasco. Which again, interestingly, took place online, particularly on Twitter.

The journey of remote political engagement on purely environmental issues in India is relatively uncharted – such movements in the past have been ‘aandolans’, and combined with issues of socio-economic justice. The kind of response they will elicit from the authorities is therefore uncertain and unpredictable.

However, there does appear to be cause for hope. The proof that these movements are having an impact is there to see – in the courts, in the CEC, in the commitments of the Assam CM. Even in the ham-fisted attempt to block the online EIA campaigns, there is proof that the voices are being heard, ruffling feathers.

What these movements need to quickly adapt to is the many tools that may be used or misused, by or against them. Their dissent, while coming from a place of emotion and pain, must be measured and communicate a message or information, rather than rage or vilification.

This is the true spirit of dissent. We still live in a democratic republic, guided by a Constitution, where no power is greater than the voice of the people, in numbers, behind an idea. We must use and amplify these voices, with wisdom, and lend our support to what is just, when and however we can.

NOTE: You can find more details about the Dehing Patkai campaign by searching for #iamdehingpatkai on Twitter. The Save Mollem campaign has its own Twitter handle @savemollemgoa, with more information, including draft letters to the authorities.

(Raghav Srivastava is an independent environmental law consultant, working on issues of natural resource governance and environmental justice. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)