Writing on grasslands and the importance of conserving ecologically rich habitats outside of forests with @abi_vanak https://inlaksshivdasanifoundationblog.org/home/2020/3/12/alumna-update-mridula-paul

Between 1880 and 2010, India lost 26 million hectares of forest land. Widely acknowledged as a crisis, there are a number of policies, programmes, and judicial pronouncements in place to combat this.  During the same time, about 20 million hectares of grasslands were also lost.

Somehow this never made it to the front pages. The answer to why this is the case is tangled up in history and economics. For a colonial state that was looking to generate revenue, forests were a natural goldmine.

Agricultural land, although not as lucrative, still presented the state with revenues in the form of taxes. These were classified as productive lands.

Grasslands, with their nomadic pastoral communities who were hard to pin down and with no obvious income generation capacity, were categorized as ‘wastelands’, a terminology that continues into contemporary times.

Continuing to view grasslands through its wasteland lens, independent India’s land classification norms clubbed all natural areas under the umbrella of forests, regardless of the type of biome it was. For official purposes, if it wasn’t a forest, it must be made one.

When treated as a wasteland, grasslands are used as empty spaces to site commercial and development projects, and when treated as an under-achieving forest, it is dug up for afforestation or land improvement programmes, irrevocably modifying the landscape.

The changes to their habitat have negatively impacted grassland-specialist wildlife such as the blackbuck, Great Indian bustard, and the Indian wolf. Once dominant across the range, many of these species are critically endangered, while others are on the brink of extinction.

With new research revealing the substantial potential of grasslands to sequester carbon and combat climate change, the true significance of grassland landscapes can now be conveyed using a vocabulary that policymakers respond to.

Unfortunately, old prejudices still stand in the way of this understanding translating to political action. When a nuanced and informed understanding of the importance of grasslands filters into policies, it will be win-win for pastoralists, grassland biodiversity, and the planet