How India’s forests are changing - Issue #91
From Tamil Nadu's shifting forests and lithium mining booms to Tesla's gains - delve into the dynamics reshaping India's environmental and economic landscapes
Climate change news of the week
In the past 25 years, Tamil Nadu’s forest composition will see a massive change.
According to a study by Anna University’s Centre for Climate Change and Disaster Management, western ghats in the state will see both evergreen and deciduous forests shrink — and a whopping 60% increase in thorn forests. “While Coimbatore and the Nilgiris districts’ evergreen forests will face the most significant habitat shift, the deciduous forests of Erode and Krishnagiri will be impacted severely among the Western Ghats districts,” reported The Hindu. “In the Eastern Ghats, the evergreen forests of Namakkal and Salem are highly vulnerable to loss and the deciduous forests of Tiruvannamalai and Vellore are predicted to have a significant habitat shift.”
The usual horsemen of the climate apocalypse are to blame — rising temperatures, water stresses, you name it. For a while now, as things stand, a biologist friend at Valparai has been seeing fewer big trees than before. Maybe they struggle more than younger trees, he had mused once. Similar reports of distress have also been reported from Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary in Kerala.
Here is Suprabha Seshan, talking about how trees in her region are producing more fruits than usual — a sign of looming death.
“I am concerned that some of the trees are masting this year, a term used for synchronized and exceptional production of flowers, fruits, and seeds,” she wrote in 2017. “I have heard that this can happen sometimes in anticipation of death by drought. It takes consecutive years of drought to kill mature trees, but when they reach survival’s edge they put their final energy into the next generation by producing copious quantities of seeds.”
It’s an essay to read.
PS: As this newsletter was written, news came too that three bird species have gone locally extinct in Arunachal. More details are awaited.
News of the week
The week gone by has seen four major developments.
The first of these has to do with electoral bonds. Given that more definitive information has just emerged, we will pick this up for a closer look in the next installment of the newsletter.
Lithium mining continued to make headlines throughout the week. Not only are companies like Adani, Kabil, and Vedanta thinking of participating in these auctions, but governments at both the centre and the states seem to have embraced critical mineral auctions with gusto. Going by headlines last week, (six) states are auctioning exploration licenses to 12 blocks. The center, however, is also holding its own auctions. It has launched e-auctions to mine seven critical mineral blocks. These distinctions have to be better understood.
Why would anyone bid for an exploration license if they cannot mine as well? Does this come with the option of offloading the mine after confirming reserves? At the same time, as this deep dive in The Ken shows, mining auctions too are being conducted despite scant information about reserves. Their reporter went to Katghora (Chhattisgarh), one of the 20 critical mineral blocks being auctioned — and came back with concerns about viability. “Refining lepidolite concentrate costs 50% more than processing other alternatives like spodumene and brine. So, any drop in the prices of lithium commodities will hit lepidolite operators the hardest due to their lower margins.” This push to auction has to be understood, in all.
In other news, the Adani group surged back into the headlines. It now faces a new inquiry in the US — on whether the conglomerate paid “officials in India for favorable treatment” on an energy project. The probe, which is also looking at Indian renewable energy company Azure Power Global, is being handled by the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York and the Justice Department’s fraud unit.
The company denied any such inquiry. Its bonds, however, fell.
Furthermore in the headlines is Tesla. India has finally decided to lower import taxes to bring in companies like Tesla. The government eventually decided that import duties would be lowered for firms that “invest at least $500 million and start domestic manufacturing within three years”.
Tesla is not the only firm benefitting from this policy. Vietnam’s VinFast, which plans to invest $2 billion and last month began constructing a factory in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, will gain as well. This could be a potentially pivotal moment for decarbonization in India’s auto sector.
In other developments. AG&P Pratham and Think Gas Distribution, both backed by global infrastructure investor I-Squared Capital, are set to merge. We have been talking about greater consolidation in City Gas Distribution. This is one more instance.
From energy to development. The Congress’ manifesto makes six big promises to India’s tribals — effective implementation of the Forest Rights Act; giving tribals a greater say in local development planning; support PESA; an MSP for forest produce; withdraw the NDA government’s amendments to Land acquisition and forest conservation laws; and revive tribal sub-plans.
Climate long reads
1. Business Standard’s Shreya Jai takes a closer look at India’s wind sector.
“There has never been a dull year for wind energy in India, not in the last decade anyway. One of the earliest green energy solutions, which drew interest from film stars and cricketers, slowly lost its sheen. Foreign companies fled, local ones shut down, and the sector majors went back to the drawing board.”
2. What happened to the Bengaluru Dream? (Mint)
3. A couple of weeks ago, we featured Joe Sacco’s book on how Canada hammered its indigenous people.
Well, here is an update. A new real estate project is coming up in Vancouver. “(Sen̓áḵw) is being built on reserve land owned by the Squamish First Nation, and it’s spearheaded by the Squamish Nation itself.” Two bits from the report are worth quoting:
“Because the project is on First Nations land, not city land, it’s under Squamish authority, free of Vancouver’s zoning rules. And the Nation has chosen to build bigger, denser and taller than any development on city property would be allowed.”
Is this a paradox? Surely indigenous living is all about pastoral principles — homesteads over highrises, etcetera. What The Squamish First Nation is trying is something modern and traditional.
As the report, published in Macleans, says:
“The project offers exciting architectural possibilities which could be replicated elsewhere by Indigenous leaders: a focus on communal public spaces rather than private yards, walking paths over parking spaces and the incorporation of Indigenous languages and designs reflecting thousands of years of site-specific history. And rather than taking an incremental approach to development, with concessions to nearby homeowners, the projects at Sen̓áḵw, Iy̓álmexw, and Heather Lands consider the entire community—including those who don’t yet live there, and those often marginalized by city planning, such as renters, non-drivers and, obviously, Indigenous people.”
One reads the piece and thinks we have the answers and the imagination. All we lack is the capacity to fight entrenched interests.