Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) chief Benedic M Marak showed the yellow card to the ubiquitous World Bank (WB) sponsored Community Led Landscape Management Project (CLLMP) for claiming to have consulted the Autonomous District Councils (ADCs) for implementing its projects in villages, when in fact they had never taken any steps to take them into the loop.
The GHADC chief called out the CLLMP at the consultation held at the State Convention Centre today called, “Universalising Community-led Natural Resource Management in Meghalaya for enhancing ecosystem services and resilience to climate change: A review of policy, legal and institutional framework involving Autonomous District councils, state forest department and other departments for strengthening capacity and convergence.”
He also took strong exception to the suggestion by the CCLMP that the ADCs are weakened by their lack of human and financial resources. Marak said the ADCs are constitutional bodies and it behoves the state to give them full support to enable them to fulfill their constitutional mandate.
Marak further said that he had gone through the background notes provided by the CLLMP for the workshop to seek convergence of laws at Central, State and the ADCs under the Sixth Schedule and was surprised that “without involving the ADC” it had been implementing its programs in hundreds of villages to “mainstream participatory land and natural resources use planning to support local people’s life base, resilience and adaptive capacity” to handle growing forest degradation and climate change.
“In point 5 of the background notes it was mentioned that the ADC were lacking in human and financial resources but this does not imply that the ADCs are incapable of fulfilling their mandate as per the mandate of the Sixth Schedule. Rather ADCs needs the full support of the State comprehensively,” he said.
The GHADC chief hoped the ADCs would not be sidelined any further.
Chief Minister Conrad Sangma who was the chief guest to inaugurate the workshop agreed with Marak and called for the ADCs to be compulsorily part of any decisions or policy on natural resources management.
“The district councils are very important institutions in our society and therefore we need to ensure that our efforts are coordinated and I hope this workshop will bring in better coordination and synchronization between the state government and the district councils,” he said.
Sangma said all stakeholders have to play part to reverse climate change and to fight it. He said various laws governing management of forests and environment that exist at Central, State and ADCs have to be brought out of conflict with each other and channelize into convergence.
He said livelihood and maintenance of environment is the crux of the problem and a balance has to be achieved as well as to minimise the damage that livelihood activities does to the environment.
The Chief Minister informed that CLLMP, an initiative to manage State’s natural resources is being implemented in 400 villages and the government aims to extend it to over 6500 villages through joint efforts of all stakeholders.
The workshop aimed at enhancing ecosystem services and resilience to climate change by mainstreaming community led natural resources management reviewing the policies, legal and institutional framework involving autonomous district councils, Forest Department and other departments for strengthening capacity and convergence.
