[Interview] Ecologist and policy expert S. Faizi advocates for putting ‘justice’ at the heart of conservation

Eminent Indian ecologist and international environment policy expert S. Faizi is among the six recipients of the Alliance World of Scientists (AWS) 2024 Planet Earth Awards.

A staunch supporter of indigenous rights, S. Faizi, who hails from Kerala, India, has made numerous significant contributions to biodiversity conservation and global policy development. He played a prominent role at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) or the Earth Summit in 1992 and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). He has also served as an adviser for G-77 (the United Nations’ intergovernmental organisation for developing nations) and is a founding member of the CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity) Alliance, encouraging community participation in biodiversity conservation. He has written and drafted several key reports and implementation plans for biodiversity conservation across India and parts of the World. His work spans over three decades.

The Alliance of World Scientists consists of 27,000 members from the scientific community across 189 countries. The U.S.-based alliance aims to provide a platform for scientists working towards addressing the climate crisis, while highlighting environmental issues and pertinent solutions. Along with Faizi, the other recipients of the 2024 Awards are James Hansen, Denise Margaret S. Matias, Kimberly Nicholas, Jamie Pittock and Fernando Valladares.

In this interview, edited for clarity and length, Faizi talks about the recognition and establishing inclusive conservation measures.

Mongabay: Congratulations on the recognition. The award underscores the need for scientific communities, policymakers, and the general public to come together to address some of today’s pressing issues. What are your thoughts on this?

S. Faizi: There is always a pressing need for the scientific community to get involved in conservation policymaking. It is equally important for policymakers to include the indigenous and local communities in conservation projects. We must acknowledge that natural resources are best protected when the historical caretakers of biodiversity and forest resources become crucial to the efforts. We need an intermixing of disciplines, and people across fields must understand and act on it, making it possible to best manage conservation initiatives. But that’s not happened in our country or many other countries that have endured the tragic period of colonialism. It’s time to put things in a new perspective to stem and reverse the erosion of biodiversity.

Mongabay: Your work in the Plachimada village in Kerala is one of the earliest examples of assessing the economic losses associated with environmental issues. What are your thoughts on the establishment of the Loss and Damage Fund at the COP 27.

S. Faizi: This is very important. The celebrated research paper published in 1997 showed that the total value of biodiversity and ecosystem services is about 33 trillion dollars per year. It was good that they ascertained the value of resources. At the same time, we also need to look at the financial costs due to environmental damages, which is what we did at Plachimada. In that small village, the actions of a big multinational company led to environmental and social havoc. Luckily, we were a big team of experts, and we used an innovative approach to determine how much damage had occurred. We need such measures for accountability.

Establishing the [Loss and Damage] Fund is a step in the right direction, but the fact that the fund will be operationalised through the World Bank is not appropriate. The World Bank is not a democratic institution, while the COP (Conference of the Parties) is one. I was part of the negotiations for the CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity) treaty between 1990-92 and I have written about the selective exclusion of certain articles from being enforced, undermining the fairness and the overall impact of such treaties for the developing nations. In both the CBD and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the financial mechanisms should statutorily be under the guidance and accountable to the COP. This is one of the hard negotiated provisions of CBD that has been rendered ineffective by the West with a conformist Secretariat (of CBD) feigning ignorance. While the Global Environment Facility (GEF) was created and made responsible for funds related to biodiversity conservation, the facility again falls under the purview of the World Bank and not under the CBD-COP as required by the treaty.

During the CBD formation negotiations, the Global South had an excellent team — I was the youngest negotiator at that time. Sadly, the negotiation skill and political unity that the G-77 had displayed then largely disappeared in the later years in the CBD parlance. I deeply appreciate the establishment of the Loss and Damage Fund and hope it also considers historical damages and losses. Soon the world has to move into liberating the developing world from debt that the [Global] North has locked them in to restore environmental resilience.

Mongabay: You have been emphasising the need for biodiversity conservation long before there was awareness on the topic. What do you think is the status now? Do you still feel that there is a knowledge gap?

S. Faizi: The awareness is definitely there. I started partaking in conservation campaigns as a Bachelor’s student for the Silent Valley Movement. At the time, we had to convince people on the importance of conservation. Now, there is no need to convince, and people are aware that this is important. Politicians also talk about it, even if it is, at times, for greenwashing purposes. The bigger question now is, how do we implement conservation strategies? How do we implement sustainable measures that will involve the local communities and the indigenous people and ensure that the benefits percolate all the way down to the people? That’s a challenge for the present times.

Mongabay: That brings me to my next question. How can we make our conservation efforts more inclusive and ensure that indigenous knowledge is accounted for when we address climate mitigation?

S. Faizi: Indigenous knowledge has stood the test of time and these practices have evolved over the years. Sadly, this knowledge is not considered and the people are being eliminated from the very resource base that they have been protecting over generations. Even today, dense and moderately dense forests are mainly found in the districts the government refers to as ITDP or Integrated Tribal Development Project districts. This is because they have protected and nurtured these resources against many forces. During the colonial period, there were uprisings between the indigenous communities and the British colonialists even before 1857, when the first acknowledged war of independence occurred. These uprisings took place across the country, and documented records show that a large number of people lost their lives to them. Without understanding historical conflicts or the contributions of the indigenous communities, we treat them as encroachers on their own land. The Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 also considers forests to be terra nulluius (nobody’s land), but forest surveys show that several million people depend on the ecosystem. We spend so much money on forest bureaucracy. If we give the forests back to the indigenous communities with necessary institutional reforms and empowerment, a lot of that money can be saved and forests better managed. In that sense, the 2006 Forest Rights Act was an excellent step. However, its implementation is weak in many states. Instead of progressing towards conservation, we see an increase in ease of doing business measures that are causing irreversible damage to our ecological endowments.

Mongabay: If there is one thing that you would like people to implement right away as a step towards conservation, what would that be?

S. Faizi: Our society has a massive lack of justice. So I would say, put justice in your mind. Place it at the heart of everything you do – justice for nature and justice for your fellow citizens. When you do that, the love for nature and the need to protect our resources will become a way of life.

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Banner image: Oxen walk on the dry stalks of Kodo millet to separate the grains from the stalks. Photo by Shuchita Jha/Mongabay.