Month: April 2014

By Dr. R.K. Ranjan Singh

Mountains have been described as islands of biodiversity surrounded by an ocean of monocultures and human-altered landscapes. Indeed, varieties of flora and fauna species found in mountain habitat have disappeared from plains and lowland regions, crowd out by human activities. Today, mountain covers only about 25% of the Earth’s surface and are home to about 12% of the human population. They host a significant component of the world’s biodiversity and many of the food staples on which humans depend originated in mountain ecosystem. Slope and ruggedness of the terrain, together with absolute altitude, determine many of the fundamental characteristics of mountain environments. Position on the Earth’s surface imposes further diversity on these basic features, primarily through the effects of latitude and continentally on climate and local weather patterns, so that some mountains are almost permanently wet, other dry and other highly seasonal. Geological substrate adds a further dimension on diversity by influencing the soil type and the potential erosion.

About 10% of the world’s population depends directly on the use of mountain resources for their livelihoods and well-being, and an estimated 40% depends indirectly on them for water, hydroelectricity, timber, mineral resources, recreation and flood control. Mountains are the earth’s unique freshwater reservoirs. They store immense amounts of water and hold them to gradually release to support the lives downstream. Despite their critical importance for the well-being of humanity, mountains receive little attention in the international development agenda.

The mountain landscapes of Manipur have fashioned an equally fascinating array of human cultures, sensitively interplay with the intrinsic rhythms of nature: the inexorable pulsations of the earth below, tempered by the elements above. The mountain ranges of Manipur occupy 80% of the total surface area of the state and are home of the 29 sub-tribes of the Tibeto-Mongoloid group. In a sense, the state of Manipur may be described as a mountainous state. These mountains have significant ecological, aesthetic and socioeconomic importance not only for those highlanders but also for the people living beyond. Till today the mountains of Manipur are the home to indigenous highlanders with varied culture, values, dialects and indigenous knowledge systems. This remarkable socioeconomic and cultural diversity is matched by a high degree of environmental diversity with huge variations in climate, soil, vegetation and wildlife within the region. Isolation a relatively inaccessible in the recent past has helped in protecting and preserving the endemic species in the mountain ranges of Manipur. There are more than hundreds of rice cultivars, medicinal plants and herbs are still productively cultivated and use by the highlanders. These precious reserves of genetic diversity are our insurance for the future, particularly as the global economy continues to turn lowland habitats into fields of high-yielding food crops – monocultures that feed the ever-increasing demands of the growing population of the state but are vulnerable to evolving pest and pathogens.

Because of their shape and size, the mountains of Manipur support a wide range of micro-climate zones. Climbing just 50 m up on the mountain slope of Manipur will be able to experience of as much as climatic variety as traveling of 50 km across flat terrain. The micro-climate zones of the Manipur mountains are like narrow bands, each stacked on top of the other. Every rise in altitude generates different conditions, supporting unique and often isolated ecosystems with some of the world’s greatest variety of plant and animal life. Much of the North East’s remaining native biological diversity especially of species and ecosystems is in the mountains of Manipur. Great diversity of endemism is largely due to the extreme heterogeneity of environment (micro-climate and soils) because of the rapid altitudinal changes (altitudinal vegetation belts) and abundant micro-habitats.

The mountains of Manipur are located in the heaviest rainfall region of the world and belong to the catchment areas of two major drainage systems of Asia’s nine giant river systems, i.e. the Brahmaputra-Barak and the Irrawaddy-Chindwin. These catchment areas provide the natural flow to the rivers and the gravity helps them to flow into the valley of Manipur forming the cradle of diversified cultural heritage. They supply water for domestic consumption , hydropower, forming lakes and wetlands allowing agricultural practices and also regulate the hydrological regime of the state. During the rain mountain and its forest cover allow to be absorbed the rain water and percolate down to the aquifer layers for enriching the ground water table. In a sense, the mountains of Manipur are outflow areas, where not only physical mountains products, soil, fuel wood, timber, minerals, agricultural products, non-wood forest products move down slope to the valley, even young an educated people were migrated downwards to the valley as a flow out.

The earth’s climate has been changing after being warm through much of history over the last 130 million years. Increasing carbon emissions in the atmosphere generated by human activities since the Industrial Revolution, and particularly since 1960s has thus led to increase in the earth’s mean global temperature. The present phenomenon of global climate change, the conditions within each of these narrow bands of micro-climatic zones are also changing. Already scientists have witnessed examples of species moving uphill in search of more suitable habitat. Further, climatologists also believe that a predicted rise in global temperatures of three half degree centigrade would be equivalent to an ecological shift upwards of about 500m in altitude. Those confined to the tops of mountains or below impassable barriers may face extinction as their habitat grows smaller. These similar kinds of syndromes are visible at the peaks of Mt. Koubru, Mt. Esso, Mt. Khongho, Mt. Godai and Mt. Sirui, etc. the rarest species are most at risk of extinction.  Among those species, high-altitude butterflies may be mentioned herewith.

Healthy mountain forests are crucial to the ecological health of the state of Manipur. they protected watersheds and supply fresh water to all over the state and more particularly to the valley of Manipur. They also harbor untold number of wildlife, provide food and fodder for the inhabitants. In the past decade, mountain forests have been disappearing at an astounding rate. Deforestation, while a complex phenomenon is generally driven by population growth, unstable urbanization and its unplanned extension of infrastructural development. After centuries of population growth and intensive land use, mountain forests have been reduced to small patch of green. Ongoing agricultural practices are unsuitable, contribute to deforestation, and accelerate hillside erosion, threatening mountain biodiversity and impairing the natural processes of forest ecosystems.

Human activities like endless abuse and misuse of mountain slopes and forests clubbed with the current trend of global climate change are profoundly degrading the mountain biodiversity of Manipur. As the slopes of the mountains were endlessly and recklessly deforested by different anthropogenic activities causing mass soil wash on the slopes of the mountains while the river beds and wetlands in the valley were silted with the debris brought down from the mountain. At the same time mountains of Manipur will become more dangerous as the surface runoff accelerate soil erosion as well as mudflows in places like Gopibung, landslides along the national Highways and frequent flash floods in the valley. As a result, the state of Manipur will be affected, first by frequent flash floods and then by drought making harder and harder economic activities both in the mountain regions and the valley of Manipur. Natural resources, accompanying environmental, and ecosystem services and increasingly degraded. The natural processes of change always mercifully slow enough in the recent past to enable a creative reordering of human activities have, over the past decades of radically new techno-economic structures, acquired a speed that threatens to destabilize many critical subsystems of biodiversity in the state mountain. The most serious result is an almost irreversible erosion of the regenerate capacity of vital ecological niches crucial for the sustenance of the mountain areas accessible and profitable for logging, fuel-wood, charcoal and mining. These activities may bring large benefits to the mountain communities, but it can also be devastating to fragile mountain ecosystems, mountain cultures and environments.

Secondly, mountain-dwellers cultivate thousands of varieties of crops and plants, many of which thrive only at specific elevations and micro-climatic zones. However, with the pressure of market economy and urbanization processes, they encourage cross-fertilization between wild and cultivated varieties. Varieties of vegetables, fruits, other HYV crops and flowers were introduced and cultivated popularly in Senapati and Ukhrul districts. Sometimes mountain ecosystems have no naturally evolved defenses against invading species. Often, these alien invaders are introduced by human visitors or as a consequence of planting non-native crops or ornamental plants. Under such circumstances varieties of native flora and fauna were completely extinct and some are on the verge of extinction from the mountains of Manipur. To save the situation, mountain friendly policies and laws are vital to protect mountain ecosystem and support mountain people.

Lastly, mountains of Manipur are the barometer of climate change in the region. these fragile ecosystems are highly sensitive to changes in temperature and variation on precipitations. Indeed, many climatologists believe mountains provide an early glimpse of what may come to pass in lowland or valley environment. For this region, it is vital that the biological and physical components of the mountains of Manipur are strictly monitored and studied and also to establish a department of Mountain Science in the University to study and for monitoring the biodiversity and the physical component of the mountains of Manipur.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/04/mountain-biodiversity-of-manipur-2/

By Amar Yumnam

A few things have become matters for constant deliberation and deeply disturbing to the minds among some close professional colleagues where I earn my bread. One is the absolute decline in the quality, capability, preparedness and commitment to learn the higher things and allow ideas to flourish among the new crop of students entering the designated space for higher learning in Manipur. Second, we observe in every direction we move that poverty does not seem to be declining whether in the region or in India as a whole; this is happening in an environment where inequality, absolute as well as relative, is on the rise. Third, the creative society which we all should aspire does not show signs of emergence in this part of the world, which supposedly should be the most dynamic zone as the space for South East, East and South Asia meeting each other.

On the face of it, we may see all these three issues as unrelated, but I feel these are symptoms of a single disease. The South East and East Asian countries are now the focus of international attention and are the ones responsible for the onset of the Asian Century. One of the factors responsible for this has been the emergence of “reverse innovation” wherein instead of the technology flowing from the advanced countries to the less developed countries it becomes the other way round. Unless a capability to innovate is evolved no society can become responsible and responsive one. This is what EarlDonald means when he writes in hisOn the Absence of the Railway Enginethus: “When in teasing mood I sometimes suggest to my students that the beginning of the endof the Ancient World is to be found not in Alaric`s capture of old Rome in AD 410, not inthe Turkish sack of new Rome in 1453 nor, indeed, at any of the much canvassed datesin between, but in an event which occurred in England in the early eighteenth century,
they tend to look blank, baffled or bored according to temperament. Yet the case can beargued that the division between Ancient and Modem was marked in 1709 when atCoalbrookdale in Shropshire, Abraham Darby first successfully smelted iron with coke,for it was this development which launched mankind, slowly at first, but withprogressively increasing rapidity, into the totally new world of an expanding andinnovatory technology and introduced into the human consciousness the wholly novelconcept of self-sustaining growth, both technical and financial.”  It is this realisation which the President of the European Union, Jose Manuel Barroso, emphasises in the State of the Union Address in September 2013 thus: “We must encourage…innovative dynamism at a European scale. This is why we must also invest more in innovation, in technology and the role of science. I have great faith in science, in the capacity of the human mind and a creative society to solve its problems. The world is changing dramatically and I believe
many of the solutions are going to come, in Europe and outside Europe…I would like Europe to be leading that effort globally.”  I am intentionally referring to this European effort as it relates to the determination of an advanced region to recapture the earlier global dominance. Contrast this with the contextual realities we had mentioned in the beginning and the absence of any effort to join the global race for advancement in this part of the world.

We know that we are good in sports and absolutely good at that. We are also good and absolutely at that when it comes to joining the world of knowledge. Here is a catch though. The commitment and effort to excel in the world of acquiring knowledge and creating knowledge are found among the youths who have left the place for institutes outside the region and outside the country. This quality of excellence charges our youths around the globe. But the very few youths who come back to the homeland are not as charged as the non-returnees, but instead possess orientations for cheating, bluff and join the social bandwagon of pushing ahead through means foul rather than otherwise. This unequal determination and capability has been rising at a very fast pace that the remaining youths do not even reach their counterparts a decade or so earlier by a big margin. The returning youths do not fire the imagination of the remaining youths here in so far as the knowledge world is concerned.

But we cannot leave it just like that. We need to collectively apply our mind as to why such a passé has come in the case of Manipur. Quite often it is said that the landlockedness of the place has been the destiny, and this constraint has stunted the people down. But how do explain the global experience of many countries and regions similar to ours having experienced wonderful development outcomes. A recent study points out that good governance, trade relationships and coordinated infrastructures development with the neighbours have been critical. These are exactly where Manipur is found absolutely wanting. To put it in a different way, absence of political will and absolute lack of managerial skill have been the undoing for Manipur.

Here it would be rewarding to reread Jeremy Bentham who said in 1830: “the proper end of governmentis the greatest happiness of all, or, in case ofcompetition, the greatest happiness of the greatestnumber, it seems to me that I have made a declarationof peace and good-will to all men.On the other hand, were I to say, the proper end ofgovernment is the greatest happiness of some one,naming him, or of some few, naming them, it seems tome that I should be making a declaration of waragainst all men, with the exception of that one, or ofthose few.Be the subject what it may, unless it be allowed tome to say, what, in relation to that subject, are myjudgment, my feelings, or my desires, I cannot sayanything in relation to it; and as to my judgment oneach occasion, giving it, as I do, for no more than it isworth, it seems to me that it is on my part nounreasonable desire to be allowed—free from everyimputation conveyed, or endeavoured to be conveyed,by the word dogmatism—to be allowed to give it…….This being the basis on which all legislation and allmorality rests, these few words written in hopes ofclearing away all obscurity and ambiguity, all doubtsand difficulties, will not, I hope, be regarded asmisapplied, or applied in waste………….in so far as between the happiness ofthe greatest number, and the happiness of any lessernumber, any incompatibility or successful competitionis allowed to have place, it may be styled a sinister end ofgovernment, or say, object of pursuit.”

The term to be marked is sinister. This is exactly what has happened in the governance in the land here where both political and bureaucratic corruptions are systemic.This prevalence has disconnected governance from performance. This has created a societal-wide relationship between informality and corruption. It is exactly this force which has dampened the commitment and capability levels of the youths. A bad scenario indeed!

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/04/missing-in-manipur-altruism-competitive-spirit-commitment-to-excel-2/