Ghazala Shahabuddin - Session 02, 2022-07-28

(00:01:09) Place of religion/faith in Shahabuddin’s life and three major influences on her work Ghazala Shahabuddin shares that she comes from a conservative Muslim family in North India, but she rebelled against the restrictive nature of the religion. While religion was not a significant part of her life before, she feels the need to revisit it now as she believes the Quran is a progressive document with many valuable lessons, and she wants to understand it better. She cites three major influences on her work: early exposure to the geography and ecology of the country, particularly its biodiversity and human interactions with it; being a part of the Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group which focussed on environmental issues and broadened her understanding of the complexities involved in ecological systems; and coming from a minority community, which made her sensitive to issues of discrimination and marginalisation in society, particularly in forests. These influences were important in shaping her work in environmental humanities and ecology, and made her more aware of the need to consider multiple variables and factors in any ecological analysis. She expresses feeling very fortunate for having grown up in an environment that provided for good education and opportunities to pursue her interests. [00:11:09 - 00:11:34- Restricted Access. Contact archives@ncbs.res.in for details]

(00:12:20) Impact of working with Kalpavriksh, pursuing a PhD and John Terborgh She speaks about working with Kalpavriksh and becoming interested in the technical aspects of environmental issues. She decided to pursue a PhD in ecological sciences to develop analytical tools and learn about alternatives to the prevalent development narrative. She talks about enjoying all her coursework, sharing that the tropical ecology course taught by John Terborgh stood out. Terborgh's passion and ability to create a story around the topic left a lasting impact, and Shahabuddin shares that she now incorporates similar teaching methods in her own work. Speaking more about Terborgh, she also shares that though he had a fixed view of conservation based on his experiences in South America, and she had a different view of conservation, coming from India, she appreciated the debates and exposure to a different worldview.

(00:21:48) Choosing her PhD topic, fieldwork in Venezuela and conservation atmosphere at Duke University She talks about how she ended up choosing to study butterflies and habitat fragmentation in Venezuela for her PhD dissertation, stemming from her interest in studying how humans influence patterns of biodiversity and excitement to work closely with Terborgh. She goes on to speak about fieldwork in Lago Guri, adjacent to the Amazonian rainforest, along with other PhD students- Madhu Rao and Nigel Asquith- and difficulties such as unpredictable weather and no reliable boats and minimal radio contact. Despite the challenges, Shahabuddin was able to complete her PhD successfully and describes it as the most exciting period of her life, also discovering new flora and fauna in the tropical dry forest ecosystem. She enjoyed her time at the Duke University campus, finding it a lovely place to be with much flexibility and exposure to different cultures. She also liked listening to talks by famous scientists and being at the cutting edge of ecology. Shahabuddin acknowledges that there was a strong emphasis on conservation being science-based, with many courses and efforts geared towards that end. However, she felt there was not enough work on including a Humanities view or environmental justice view of conservation.

(00:32:43) Financial support for PhD, Shahabuddin’s conservation worldview and working with Terborgh She shares that her PhD was fully supported PhD with scholarships and living expenses at Duke's School of the Environment. There was also some support for field work and she was a recipient of the Aga Khan Foundation’s fellowship. Terborgh, she says, had a hands-off approach, allowing students to work independently but providing guidance when necessary. Speaking about her conservation worldview, Shahabuddin says the period during her PhD strengthened it. She felt that the reductionist way of doing science was a good way to think about management and communicate with policymakers. However, she also believed in the importance of combining reductionist science with a humanistic approach to conservation that takes into account the nuances of different stakeholder groups and traditional knowledge and felt that reductionist science and a humanistic approach were both needed to do conservation work properly in India. After completing her PhD, Shahabuddin felt a strong desire to return to India. She talks about working on a research project with Terborgh, studying herbivores on small islands, including leaf cutter ants. She helped with the field work and later did all of the statistical analysis for the project, which resulted in the landmark paper, “Ecological Meltdown in Predator-Free Forest Fragments.” [Archivist’s note: the paper is not mentioned by its name in the interview but is given here for reference]

(00:44:14) Return to India post PhD, nature of Shahabuddin’s work and Ullas Karanth as a mentor In 1999, Shahabuddin returned to India without a clear plan for her professional future, but with a general interest in working on human impact and forest ecology. She shares that she was keen to find a faculty job to pursue these interests. The common thread that runs through the diverse nature of Shahabuddin’s work, she says, has been understanding how humans influence biodiversity patterns. She talks about addressing questions related to the effects of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) on animal communities and the impacts of grazing, fuel wood extraction, fragmentation, and land use change on forests. Shahabuddin recalls a discussion with one of her early mentors, Ullas Karanth, about the impact of NTFPs on animal communities in the forest. After finishing her PhD, she applied to the Wildlife Conservation Society in India, which was led by Karanth at the time, and received a fellowship to work in the Sariska Tiger Reserve. She describes to Karanth as a supportive mentor who helped with her project design.

(00:49:41) Research projects in the initial years upon return to India Shahabuddin describes her journey towards research, which was driven by her interest in fieldwork, anthropogenic influences on landscapes, and a desire to bring science into conservation policy. She mentions working on a freelance basis because of her spouse's itinerant job, and traveling across India from 1999-2000 to find a specific research question and site to work on. In 2001, she obtained a position at the Council for Social Development, a think tank in Delhi, and was given an open canvas to work on environmental projects. She then received a grant with Karanth to begin work on Sariska, analysing the influence of grazing and fuel wood collection on birds in a heterogeneous landscape with different levels of degradation. She worked with Raman Kumar and Ashok Verma to map the forests, look at the disturbance regimes, and conduct in-depth surveys of birds in winter and summer. The resulting dataset was used in several publications and also contributed to global meta-analyses. In Sariska, Shahabuddin found that the absence of certain bird species may indicate local extinction, which led to questions about the history of human habitation in the area. She shares that she then became interested in the displacement of people living inside national parks in India. She began to understand the unjust and top-down management of the Sariska Reserve, especially in relation to the Gujjars. Along with a historian, Mahesh Rangarajan, she decided to further study the displacement of people living inside national parks in India. They organised a seminar and published a paper in Conservation and Society, in an attempt to put together data on displacement from protected areas. [01:00:46 - 01:01:01 - Restricted Access. Contact archives@ncbs.res.in for details]

(01:03:50) Perspectives from working in Sariska and 2014 paper on displacement Shahabuddin’s view of the people living in Sariska changed as she started working and interacting with them and the forest department. She learned to look at the problem from a wider perspective, considering other destructive influences like timber cutting by the forest department, which had led to local extinctions. She started looking at the history of the national park, the justification for its planning and management, and whether it was possible to allow some people to continue living inside with their small-scale impacts and still have a lot of wildlife. The trigger for her change in perspective came from moving around the reserve, talking to people, and looking at the history of the park. She felt empathy towards the people living in protected areas, who had had a bad deal since independence. Wanting to document all of this and balance the ecology of the place with environmental justice issues, she did a lot of writing on this, and displacement became one of her pet projects. She also talks about writing a paper in 2014 with a student on the issue of displacement, triggered by the local extinction that happened in Sariska, and the government's changed policy on rehabilitation thereafter.

(01:11:50) Travelling across India, Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group and working in various landscapes She discusses becoming interested in studying human disturbances to the landscape after traveling across India following her PhD. Observing subtle degradation and regeneration problems led to a curiosity about the fate of forests and their impact on the people who depend on them. Shahabuddin mentions founding an environmental action group in Delhi- Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group- with which she worked for about a year. The group was initially meant to work on various environmental issues, including research and conservation, but later decided to focus on waste and energy. She talks about working as a research assistant in the Kanha Tiger Reserve for a project on protected area management with the Indian Institute of Public Administration in 1999. She then worked with Winrock International on a consultancy project on the influence of NTFP collection and joint forest management in West Bengal. She mentions travelling across India from 1999 to 2000 to see a range of forest ecosystems and wetlands, supporting herself while staying with her parents [interviewee addition post interview: seeing human interactions in the forest ecosystems and wetlands was also something she did during this time]. On a trip to a tribal area in Gadchiroli, she participated in a workshop and developed a proposal on forest management with the tribal community. The community had appropriated the forest and was doing a good job of protecting it, but they had also encountered problems with regeneration, reducing NTFP collections, and external lopping. She found the experience eye-opening and realised the ambiguities of the situation between traditional knowledge and modern science.

(01:21:23) Having to move research out of Sariska She speaks about the project focussed on birds and vegetation in Sariska in the 2000s, studying how vegetation responds to extractive use and how that affects birds. While she would have loved to continue working in Sariska, she recollects that all researchers were “thrown out” after the local extinction of tigers. Barely managing to complete data collection, Kumar and she had to move out in 2005, as permits to work in Sariska became impossible to obtain. However, she continued the displacement work outside Sariska where some villagers had been moved. She also went on to find a site in the Himalayas where one did not need permits to work.