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Mary-Rose Abraham: That was Schmerbeck. Vanak says that some of the burning practiced by indigenous people actually served to prevent worse fires in the dry season by using up fuel. It’s a technique not fully explored yet by the government.
Abi Vanak: A couple of years ago, there was a meeting called by the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change in Delhi, and Australian fire experts were called in as well. And their message was very simple. They said the cheapest and best tool to fight fire is a matchstick.
Mary-Rose Abraham, on tape: Is a matchstick? Ok, that sounds completely counterintuitive.
Abi Vanak: Yeah. The idea is that if you prevent the buildup of dry matter, of dry biomass on the surface of the forest by allowing for periodic controlled burning, then you will prevent these really large out-of-control fires.
Mary-Rose Abraham: India’s forest officials are allowed to set controlled burns. But in a survey of forest officials in 11 Indian states, two-thirds said controlled burning was not being regularly performed.
Abi Vanak: They need to come back to what was called block burning. Where, you know, entire blocks used to be burned in a rotational manner, once in every three years, and be done in the cool season when the grass is dry enough but there’s still some moisture in the soil, and it’s also cool so that the fires don’t go out of hand. And these cool season fires are necessary.
Mary-Rose Abraham: And those indigenous groups who had practiced controlled burning for millennia can’t perform controlled burns anymore. In fact, any type of fire in a forest — whether accidental or intentional — is lumped into one bucket. And banned. We need to look at an old law to understand why. The Indian Forest Act was passed in 1927 by the British colonizers who were in power on the subcontinent.
Abi Vanak: Colonial forestry policy in India was to suppress fire, wherever it occurred.
Mary-Rose Abraham: For the British, Indian forests were primarily for the harvesting of timber. So they saw fire as destructive to their economic interests.
Abi Vanak: We have continued to adopt the British way, the colonial way of thinking, and say all fire is bad. And enshrine that in law. So the Forest Act criminalizes burning. What it then does of course is ignore the history of human use of forests. In some way, it is reinforcing that colonial mentality where you’re basically bringing what the British brought into India and re-imposing it on Indian people. And there’s no need for that. Allow people to take control of their ecosystems, that they were managing for a very long time.
Mary-Rose Abraham: In theory, there are ways for forest dwellers to continue their traditional practices, including using fire. One is the similar-sounding Forest Rights Act. It gives India’s forest dwellers restored rights over their traditional lands. But it’s been stuck in legal wrangling since it was passed in 2006.
There is also the Joint Forest Management system, set up in 1990. This is a cooperative agreement that allows forest dwellers to protect and manage their local state-owned forest, such as fire prevention and cattle grazing, in exchange for accessing benefits from that forest. But in practice, these systems have been set up for only about 30 percent of India’s forest area.
And this points to an overall issue with India’s national forest fire policy: it has one only in theory. India’s central government created a National Action Plan on Forest Fire in 2018, but the National Green Tribunal — that’s India’s court system created just for environmental protection – ruled this May that due to the great increase in wildfires a monitoring committee made up of many agencies and the forest chief from each state would be needed to implement it. Until that committee forms, the plan’s action items — such as fire risk mapping and improving ground detection — are stalled.
And the joint report of the Indian government and the World Bank recommended policy changes, more firefighting staff, and more engagement with the local community. They also called for fire breaks, that second major flaw that we talked about earlier. A fire break, also called a fire line, clears vegetation to prevent fire from jumping into the forest. They help to stop accidental fires from spreading out of control. And that was a huge fail-point in the Kurangani Fire. Mohan Raman, who was on the Kurangani rescue mission, is sure there are no fire lines here, by that lone pine tree.
Mohan Raman: This is no fire line. I am damn sure. It’s necessary, mandatory for the forest management, national park, or wildlife sanctuary. We should break the line for fire. At least 1 and a half meter of fire line to prevent forest fire.
Mary-Rose Abraham: The state government of Tamil Nadu — where the wildfire happened — commissioned an official report on the forest fire. It was never made public. But media reports citing sources who read it, said the state’s forest department was mostly to blame — a finding that Raman agrees with.
Mohan Raman: We blamed the forest department, not the touristic.
Mary-Rose Abraham, on tape: So when you look up at the mountain, does it look like the farmland is right next to the grassland and the Shola forest? There’s no division?
Mohan Raman: No division. That’s why it catches fire.
Mary-Rose Abraham: Raman says the wilderness area has no separation from the cultivated land, which farmers routinely set ablaze. A local would know best. So we headed to the home of Karuppasami. He goes by a single name. He’s the one who rescued Anu Vidya, carrying her more than 4 miles down the mountain in a makeshift sling, hours after she was caught in the fire.
Karuppasami: (in Tamil, with English voiceover) They put her in the ambulance. At that time Anu Vidya caught hold of my hand and she said: “Brother, I don’t know who you are, in fact I don’t even know where my parents are, but I want you to come with me.” And then I reassured her that the doctors are there and she will be well taken care of.
Mary-Rose Abraham: The trekking path passes by Karuppasami’s home. He blames the forest department for the fire. He says they have not cleared fire breaks between the village’s agricultural area and the forest. And how did the fire start? Impossible to know for sure, but Karuppasami says farmers in the area set fire to the forest frequently. It’s illegal, but they use fire to keep wild animals away from their crops, or to clear the area for cattle grazing. And if the forest is burning, it is the forest department’s responsibility to control it.
After Anu’s death, her family came to visit Karuppasami. He burst into tears when he saw them. For two months after the fire, his wife said he could barely eat his meals. The fire affected many in Kurangani village. Chinnathai, who also goes by one name, was one of the few women who visited victims in the makeshift trauma center soon after they came down from the mountain.
Chinnathai: (in Tamil, with English voiceover): Dear lord, they were all charred. I was afraid. Their faces were all burned. One girl called me, paati, grandma, and I took a sari and covered her. Beautiful girls, all very pretty.
Mary-Rose Abraham: Kurangani village has suffered not only an emotional impact. Its economy has been hit too. Since the tragedy, the forest department has periodically closed off access to the trek and an even more popular waterfall nearby. Without the usual steady flow of trekkers and visitors, the villagers are now dependent on agriculture and odd jobs outside the village.
When forest fires are allowed to spread too far, or burn too intensely, it can devastate a family, a community, and a village. But it has massive implications for India’s environmental picture as well, and some of the country’s goals may actually make fires more common and deadly. One looming concern is climate change. Here’s Vanak.
Abi Vanak: I think we must recognize that as our ecosystems are drying up because of climate change, we are going to have more severe fires. We’re going to have fires in ecosystems that have not evolved to have fires in them.
Mary-Rose Abraham: Schmerbeck adds that fires also prevent forests from acting like carbon sinks, to soak up extra CO2 from the atmosphere.
Joachim Schmerbeck: All of these areas even if they are in the very dry parts … they can over the next 50, 100 years sequester much more carbon if they are not burned.
Mary-Rose Abraham: India has also set ambitious targets to increase its forest cover. NASA data shows that China and India have led the world in increasing green cover over the last two decades. China’s contribution comes from conserving and expanding forests. But India’s green cover was largely food crops. From 2015 to 2017, its forest cover only increased by 1 percent.
So India is on a frenzy of tree planting to achieve 33 percent forest cover by 2030, up from its current 24 percent. Ironically, this may also lead to more forest fires.
To understand why, we need to start with something as simple as the classification of an ecosystem. India has a wide range of savanna systems. That’s an overstory of trees with a continuous understory of grasses.
Mary-Rose Abraham, on tape: Is Kurangani area, should it be classified as savanna?
Abi Vanak: Yes, it is savanna. This is again unfortunately again a colonial hangover. If you look at the vegetation map of India, you will not find the word savanna anywhere. It doesn’t exist in the dictionary of foresters. This is because the British foresters believed that all the grasslands that you saw in India were degraded forest ecosystems.
Mary-Rose Abraham: This misclassification actually leads to the destruction of savanna habitats. India’s afforestation programs target grasslands as places where trees should be planted.
Abi Vanak: By planting trees in these systems is actually going to make them more drought-prone because these trees require water to grow. So these trees, especially in these systems which see fairly little rainfall, these trees are going to be fairly water-hungry as well.
Mary-Rose Abraham: Trees that suck up water can lead to drought conditions which can then lead to a higher risk of wildfires. Vanak believes not only afforestation but much of environmental policy needs to be critically examined.
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