Ghazala Shahabuddin - Session 03, 2022-09-02

(00:01:12) Council for Social Development, the Sariska project and interactions with colleagues and collaborators Ghazala Shahabuddin talks about facing difficulty in finding a teaching position upon her return to Delhi. Despite being qualified, she did not get the assistant professorship she applied for. Instead, she decided to freelance and continue her research. She then came across an opening in the Council for Social Development, which was starting an environment department and wanted a younger person to come on board. It gave her the freedom to develop the department and work on her concerns about conservation issues, including the human dimensions of conservation. She discusses her experience studying bird life in Sariska. She notes that the core area of the park had healthy vegetation and abundant prey, but the areas outside of the core were overgrazed and degraded, with native vegetation changing significantly. This prompted her to investigate the history of the park's vegetation and land use, as well as the management practices of the forest department. With funds from a grant from India Foundation, she collaborated with a sociologist- Ravi Kumar and a historian- Radhika Johari, to form a multi-disciplinary team to analyse the problem of forest degradation in Sariska. They collected documents from various archives, including state documents about how people used the landscape and were settled in the area. They aimed to understand the long-term causes of the forest's degradation, and not just the immediate issues of grazing and wood-cutting. Shahabuddin found the experience of studying the history and management practices of the park exciting and motivating, despite the ecological concerns at the heart of the investigation. This historical perspective was unusual for her, as ecologists often focus on immediate causes and solutions to environmental problems, she says. She mentions attending seminars and meetings in Delhi where social and historical issues, such as caste and tribal rights, were discussed, with scholars like Rohan D'Souza, Mahesh Rangarajan, and Vasant Saberwal. She became interested in studying the degradation of the Sariska forest, and with the support of her colleagues, conducted research on the longer-term causes of the problem. She did not view the local people as the sole cause of the degradation, but rather wanted to understand the complex factors contributing to it. Shahabuddin found empowerment in obtaining a PhD and believed she could tackle complex problems such as this. She spent time in the field with students, collecting data on the sociology and bird life of the area. She also observed issues with the management of protected areas and was able to access sensitive information from Forest Department files. This led to a broader interest in displacement issues in India, and she collaborated with Rangarajan to organise a seminar on the topic. In 2004, before the local extinction of tigers in Sariska was discovered, Shahabuddin tried to gather information on displacement through a social project. She had finished her fieldwork when the tiger crisis erupted in February 2005. After that, it was impossible to obtain permission to talk to villagers and do fieldwork. Speaking about her collaborators, she shares that she co-authored a paper on the project in Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) with Manish Shrivastava, a student from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Ashok Verma and Raman Kumar, she says, were involved with the bird work from 2003 to 2004 and 2004 to 2005, respectively.

(00:16:53) Sariska: Forest Department and community-based conservation Shahabuddin states that before the tiger crisis, the forest department was easier to communicate with. She says that she did not need formal permission to visit villages, and the department allowed her to do so informally. Shahabuddin reflects on how the project forced her to understand the socioeconomics of the area and the pressures on the people living there. She criticises the Forest Department for not taking action to address these issues while blaming the Gujjars for the loss of tigers. She advocates for community-based conservation around protected areas and finding a balance between biodiversity and human use. She believes that social scientists and conservationists need to work together to find solutions to protect the area from degradation. Her work aimed to contribute to this balance and to figure out what more can be done in the landscape to protect it. [00:17:16 - 00:17:51 - Restricted Access. Contact archives@ncbs.res.in for details] [00:20:54 - 00:21:05 - Restricted Access. Contact archives@ncbs.res.in for details]

(00:23:51) Collaborations on environment and displacement and motivations behind them She attributes helping organise the symposium on displacement to her interest in human dimensions in protected areas. She speaks about those who attended it. She shares how she had noticed conflict around protected areas during field visits. In 2003, she was part of putting together a special issue on environmental issues, with contributions from conservationists, law experts, and scientists. Shahabuddin goes on to discuss her collaboration with Rangarajan on a paper on displacement for Conservation and Society's special issue on the topic. They had become interested in the issue due to the push to throw more people out of tiger reserves during the tiger crisis, with the narrative being that displacement was necessary to save biodiversity. She was keen to document how many people had been displaced and bring attention to the issue for conservationists to consider when conducting conservation efforts. They asked people from different countries to contribute papers for the special issue as well. The motivation for the 2014 paper, Conservation-induced Displacement: Recent Perspectives from India [Archivist’s note: the paper is not mentioned by its name in the interview, but is given here for reference], she says, was to assess whether the new relocation package implemented after the tiger crisis had improved the displacement process and social impact for oustees. [Archivist’s note: the interviewee refers to ‘the Ministry of Environment’ but the index term uses the authority record name Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), though it was called Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) at the time being spoken about in the interview.]

(00:33:46) Value of approaches adopted in her research Next, Shahabuddin reflects on her experience of conducting an in-depth study of protected area management and people-park relations in Sariska, which had not been done in such detail before. She emphasises the importance of a multi-disciplinary team, consisting of both social scientists and ecologists, to ensure a balanced and comprehensive approach to managing protected areas. However, she cautions against individuals without the proper training or guidance from experts attempting to conduct such studies. She also notes that funding for these kinds of studies is often lacking, with conservation organisations more focussed on protecting specific species than taking into account the social and ecological impact of conservation efforts on local communities. Overall, she emphasises the need for a careful and thoughtful approach to conservation efforts that takes into account the perspectives of all stakeholders involved. Shahabuddin discusses the importance of understanding the human environment when conducting ecological research. She uses a lot of historical background before framing questions to ensure a better understanding of the variables. She highlights the importance of connecting with local communities when conducting research, as they can provide valuable information about the history of the place and its use.

(00:39:46) Asking applied questions She believes that it is important to ask applied questions that can be used for policy advocacy and management advice. She admits to being a conservationist at heart and not a pure scientist, although she is planning to get back to ecology research, particularly in the Himalayas, where bird life is changing with climate and land use change.

(00:45:20) Writing on Indian conservation The motivation for organising seminars and editing books with the aim of bringing together diverse perspectives on conservation and knowledge, Shahabuddin states, came from the belief that social scientists and biologists need to talk to each other for productive and exciting discussions, even if they have different perspectives. Finding that many ecologists were engaging with locals but not writing about it, she wanted to get people to write about the social dimensions of conservation. She found it challenging to get people to write, deliver on time, and put together a book that combines science and social science perspectives. She was encouraged by people like Rangarajan and Saberwal, who were also sensitive to the social and ecological parts of the story. Shahabuddin talks about writing a book on Indian conservation, Conservation at the Crossroads: Science, Society, and the Future of India's Wildlife, motivated by her twenty years of experience and the lack of representation from an ecologist's point of view. She left the Council for Social Development in 2004 to move to Nepal and continued working on the book, Making Conservation Work, while she was there. She then moved to the US and with support from the New India Fellowship, finished writing her book, Conservation at the Crossroads, from 2007 to 2009. [Archivist’s note: the books are not named in the interview, but are provided here for reference] [Archivist’s note: the interviewee refers to T.R. Shankar Raman as ‘Sridhar’]

(00:53:13) Years at Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) and work in Kumaon In 2009, she returned to India and applied for a position at Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD), to try out academia. She describes her time at the new department there, the School of Human Ecology, focussed on environment and development studies. A high teaching commitment left little time for research, but she was able to take students to the field for their Master's research in the Himalayan ecology. This allowed her to gain an inroad into the local ecology and work on bird life. She interacted closely with social scientists in the department and learned about social research methods. The university atmosphere was conducive to multi-disciplinary work and peer-reviewed research. She also liked interacting with those on the Board, such as Sudha Vasan and CR Babu. She was associated with Centre for Ecology, Development and Research (CEDAR) and worked with a local NGO, Central Himalayan Rural Action Group (CHIRAG), which focussed on afforestation, spring water revival, and income generation activities in the Kumaon area. The NGO welcomed university students to interact with them and work on projects. Eventually in 2014, politics, a schism between social scientists and ecologists resulted in Shahabuddin leaving AUD and deciding to return to the NGO world or freelance work. [01:01:28- 01:01:48 - Restricted Access. Contact archives@ncbs.res.in for details]

(01:01:47) Rashtrapati Bhavan project and cheetah reintroduction programme Shahabuddin then speaks about her involvement with a year-long project on documenting the natural part of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Amita Baviskar had told her about this project [interviewee addition post interview: it was Baviskar who hired her for this project]. It involved surveying all animal groups that could be seen, hiring students to do surveys during different seasons, and documenting biodiversity there. She specifically mentions consulting Pradeep Krishen regarding plants. She talks about the chapters she wrote for the book, released by President Pranab Mukherjee, which was an outcome of this project. It is now available online and with the government as a document for the future. She shares that she had a long-standing interest in cheetahs and pursued a fellowship at the Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, in 2015 to study the politics of the reintroduction programme of cheetahs in India. Initially, she planned to work on displacement but focused on the cheetah issue at the suggestion of their mentor, Devesh Kapur, at the institute. She went on to write a paper on the subject. Shahabuddin states that the reintroduction of cheetahs to India is a controversial project that requires serious planning and socioeconomic development to be successful. She mentions a lot of issues with the project, a few of them being concerns over genetics, ecological viability, and social issues. According to her, more preparation and study are needed before the reintroduction of cheetahs to India can be done correctly. [01:10:28 - 01:10:30 - Restricted Access. Contact archives@ncbs.res.in for details] [01:12:14 - 01:14:19 - Restricted Access. Contact archives@ncbs.res.in for details]

(01:15:51) Work in the Himalayas Shahabuddin discusses her involvement with CEDAR and the work they did in the Himalayas. She worked on various projects, and was especially interested in land use change and its impact on Himalayan birds. She mentions mentoring Tarun Menon, who worked on a large project in the Mukteshwar landscape. She also worked on a project on the fire issue with a student from National Centre for Biological Sciences- Rohit Nandakumar, and volunteered as a trainer for a consortium of NGOs promoting nature tourism at the community level. She was drawn to the region due to its rural nature tourism programme and the disappearing Himalayan oak forest. Along with a student, she also researched van panchayats and changing forest management in the area.

(01:23:24) Current research and affiliations Shahabuddin has received small grants from Nature Conservation Foundation and Indian Institute of Science to study bird abundance and patterns related to climate change. She is re-surveying bird observation sites from 2016 onwards, with a particular interest in woodpeckers as an indicator species affected by climate change. She plans to write grant proposals for further studies on species interactions and competitive pressures in the forest. She shares that last year, she joined WCS India as a scientist, moving from CEDAR to expand her peer group. She has also been associated with Ashoka University, in a teaching position, which is likely to continue.