200 Million Strike in India Against Right-Wing Narendra Modi Government’s Policies

Editor’s Note: This article previously specified the species of wolf, as well as the time frame, to which it was hunted to extinction. What experts say is a missed opportunity in a European Commission proposal has been clarified. Captions for the first and third photos have been corrected.

The Swedish government is planning to cull the country’s wolf population by half. The plan faces little to no resistance in the Swedish parliament, given a majority are in favor of the proposal. But conservationists, other experts and Green Party MPs have warned the move could be a breach of biodiversity laws in the European Union (EU), risking the country being dragged to court. The issue, though, is part of a much larger and graver problem.

Europe has lost most of its mega herbivores (those weighing more than 1,000 kilograms or 2,204 pounds), 75 percent of species weighing more than 100 kg (220 pounds) and a little over half of its terrestrial mammals weighing more than 10 kg (22 pounds), a new paper points out.

And, of the species that survive today, many have reduced ranges and numbers. Suffice to say, proposals to further cull wildlife populations can only accelerate the extinction crisis. But all is not lost. At least, not yet.

How Large Mammals Can Make a ‘European Comeback’

The paper charts a path for re-wilding Europe with large mammals, or those weighing more than 10 kg (22 pounds), both for conserving biodiversity and restoring ecosystems. It lists species, state of extinction risks, and ways of restoration, such as natural recolonization and reintroduction.

And, all this, the paper argues, is a legal obligation for Europe in light of a host of EU and international laws, including the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) that requires Europe to restore both the diversity and density of its megafauna. More specifically, Article 8(f) of CBD states every party that has signed onto the agreement “shall, as far as possible and as appropriate … rehabilitate and restore degraded ecosystems and promote the recovery of threatened species, inter alia, through the development and implementation of plans or other management strategies.”

Additionally, the paper states, Europe has a moral obligation to re-wild in solidarity with the Global South, which is currently doing the heavy lifting when it comes to biodiversity preservation.

“Legal obligations have definitely played a role in some real-life scenarios, such as the legal protection of wolves which has clearly aided the species’ European comeback,” Arie Trouwborst, lead author of the paper and associate professor at Tilburg Law School, told Toward Freedom.

However, in the context of general commitments to restore ecosystems, “large mammals, especially those which disappeared from Europe long ago, like elephants and lions, have largely been a blind spot—wrongly so, as our paper aims to show,” he added. No examples exist of European governments undertaking such a feat with the Global South in mind.

‘Life Goes On After Wolves Come Back’

Large mammals play a critical role in ecosystem restoration or even in ecosystem functions in general. Elaborating on the same, Jens-Christian Svenning, co-author on the paper, listed out three key reasons why:

1. Large herbivores tend to promote heterogeneity in vegetation structure and composition as well as in soil conditions, while large carnivores contribute to this effect by modulating herbivore assemblage composition, densities and behavior, in complex ways;
2. megafauna constitute and generate microhabitats for numerous other species, dependent on their living bodies, their carcasses, and their dung; and lastly,
3. megafauna species are mobile and play important roles in plant and nutrient dispersal, which is crucial to maintaining local landscapes and in assisting the fight against climate change.

As for ill-thought out calls to cull wildlife, like the Swedish plan to reduce wolf populations by half, the paper says in recent decades, people in countries like Germany and France have “quickly discovered that life goes on after wolves come back.” The sentiment is also true for larger mammals that are generally considered more dangerous for human life, like brown bears, which have been successfully reintroduced in Italy’s Trento region.

The expansion of wolves in Europe is also a result of strong legal protections. Wolves were not reintroduced in Europe. Rather, they naturally began expanding into areas in which they existed before. And legal instruments like the Bern Convention and Habitats Directive assisted such expansion by ensuring countries that wolves had moved into protected them. Earlier, wolves were hunted to extinction in large parts of Europe.

The Habitats Directive has been crucial for the restoration of wolves in Europe. “It’s obvious when you compare wolf numbers in EU states that are bound by the Directive—like Sweden—to those in countries which are not, like Norway,” Trouwborst said. “Wolves have been trying to make a comeback in both countries, but they have not been successful in Norway.”

The Directive provides room for enforcing conservation action, both by the European Commission and via national courts.

Regarding even more challenging species reintroduction candidates, the paper says if people in India can co-exist with lions and elephants, and people in Tanzania and Zimbabwe can do so with hyenas and hippos, “then surely this is also possible in Europe.”

India’s population density stands at 464 people per square kilometer (or 0.38 of a square mile), as opposed to 34 people per square kilometer in Europe. And yet, the paper points out, people in India still share the landscape with elephants, rhinos, gaur (Indian bison), tigers, lions, leopards, snow leopards, caracals (a wild cat), brown bears, wolves and others.

Addressing Equity in Restoration Models

Apart from CBD and EU biodiversity laws, another campaign demands decadal commitments and efforts. The United Nations has recognized the years between 2021 and 2030 as the “Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.” A guidebook on such restoration efforts points to re-wilding in Europe where “there is enough space and opportunity to introduce species that have been lost.”

But the question is “restore to what?” In other words, what is the reference point or model that could illustrate what the world needs to go back to?

“Large mammals play a key role in ecosystems and many of them disappeared due to human interference. So the big picture… the model must be the healthy ecosystems that occurred before humans wiped out many of the largest of species,” Trouwborst explained. Such models can be found today, which could be the basis for restoration in Europe. Some European ecosystems looked like versions of modern-day east and south Africa, as well as India, with elephants, hyenas, lions, rhinos and hippos.

“As Europeans we cannot keep expecting those in the Global South to continue conserving and even restoring healthy ecosystems abundant in megafauna and not take that seriously ourselves,” Trouwborst said. In addition to solidarity with the Global South, another moral argument is “you should restore what you destroyed,” he added.

The reference in Article 8(f) of CBD to “as far as possible and as appropriate,” is about equity, legal scholars point out. It is equivalent to the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” (CBDR-RC) enshrined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The principle refers to developed countries being held responsible for undertaking a majority of climate action because of their historical greenhouse gas emissions. That, plus their capacity—financial in particular—to shoulder such burdens.

Carina Bury, a PhD candidate in International Environmental Law at the University of Hamburg in Germany, explained that qualifiers such as “as far as possible” that are often encountered in international environmental law should be read in light of CBDR-RC. In practice, what this also means is if someone says elephants in Europe is not plausible, then, Trouwborst argued, “I’d say look at India. If it’s possible in India, then why not in Europe? It would take some small and some big sacrifices but it’s not impossible. It’s a question of priority.”

Other researchers also have pointed out the question of equity is absent when international environmental law has been implemented.

“I found that Germany omitted to implement the treaty in the manner required by the constitution. The consequence is that the treaty remains largely inapplicable, but it puts pressure on states of the global South—such as Montenegro—to implement the same treaty,” she said of her research that found Germany neglected to conserve its wetlands. Ramsar Convention is an international treaty signed in 1971 that regulates the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands.

This reporter reached out to the federal environment ministry in Germany for a response. The copy will be updated if and when a response is received.

Considering Germany is a country with significantly above-average levels of wealth and technical know-how, it is “possible, and indeed reasonable to expect that wetlands located in German territory be managed as green infrastructure,” Bury said. She also added that when countries with sufficient resources and technical knowledge start to neglect their international obligations, less-advantaged countries are less likely to comply.

New Hope with Europe’s New Nature Restoration Law?

On June 22, the European Commission put forth a proposal for a new “Nature Restoration Law” that aims to halt both biodiversity loss and the degradation of ecosystems. The draft law aims to address a variety of ecosystems—including agricultural lands, marine habitats and urban areas—and it lays out targets to be met by 2030, 2040 and 2050.

But experts have pointed out a huge missed opportunity because the proposal does not highlight the importance of megafauna for ecosystem restoration. Plus, the proposal only focuses on those species that are included in the Habitats Directive, not those that had long ago disappeared from the European landscape. The European Commission is yet to respond to these critiques.

So while there are legal hooks in the proposal that could help restoration efforts for some large mammals,” the proposal ignores current scientific knowledge as to what healthy and well-functioning European ecosystems really looked like,” Trouwborst pointed out.

This story was developed as part of a journalism residency program at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (MPIL) in Heidelberg, Germany.

Rishika Pardikar is an Indian journalist who reports on climate change and biodiversity. She is currently a journalist-in-residence at MPIL in Heidelberg, Germany.

For the first time in Khandya’s life as a working ox, five veterinary doctors visited him more than 30 times in one week at Pandurang Khondre’s cattle shed.

It all started in mid-2022 when Khondre saw traces of an infection on the right leg of Khandya, his strongest ox. “Khandya” is derived from the name of a local deity named “Khandoba.”

“The ox had worked without any trouble for the entire day,” the farmer recounted. “However, I saw a few red-colored nodes when I returned the next morning.” Khondre immediately called a private vet. When the doctor showed up an hour later at Khondre’s cattle shed in the Jambhali village of western India’s Maharashtra state, he suspected Khandya must have been infected with Lumpy skin disease. That began the first of eight weeks of veterinary visits for Khandya and other cattle on the farm.

Lumpy, or LSD, is a contagious viral disease that affects cattle. Certain species of blood-feeding insects, like flies, ticks and mosquitoes, transmit it. Symptoms include skin nodules, severe loss of appetite, fever, nasal discharge, watery eyes, drop in milk production, and swelling of limbs and genitalia.

In 2022, Lumpy became an epidemic in India, affecting 2.9 million cattle (1.51 percent) across 23 states. From 2022 until the first week of this month, India reported 184,447 cattle deaths. No reports in the public domain have yet to sum up economic losses for the whole country. However, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2020 risk assessment report mentions Lumpy caused $1.45 billion in direct losses of livestock and production in south, east and southeast Asia. The report added, “These losses may be higher, due to the severe trade implications for infected countries.”

As of this month, 84.19 million Indian cattle have been vaccinated against Lumpy. If going by the latest livestock census released in 2019, that would mean 43 percent of cattle.

With the lives of India’s poor having been complicated by climate change impacts and livestock diseases, many have been forced to flee their homes in search of another source of income and take on loans for living expenses, as this reporter documented in a previous article for Toward Freedom.

A Tearful Ox

Lumpy’s impact is so severe that Khandya went from eating 50 kilograms of cattle feed daily to finding it difficult to swallow five kilograms. Khondre, who is in his early 50s, and his wife, Malan, in her late 40s, spent over 16 hours a day looking after the ox as he struggled with the disease.

“He wouldn’t eat anything. When asked what happened, he always responded with tears,” says Khondre.

Khandya is among the 34,711 cattle in Maharashtra who have succumbed to Lumpy, for which goat pox vaccine is being administered. While India has developed an indigenous vaccine, it has yet to be made available for commercial production.

Then, in the final 72 hours of Khandya’s life in October, the situation took a bad turn.

“He had become so stiff that whenever we touched him, it felt like we were touching wood,” Malan said. “The nodes often returned despite the regular treatment.”

The Khondres spent over 60,000 Indian Rupees ($724) over three months on the treatment.

“The Government doctors wouldn’t show up. There were times we waited for an entire day,” Khondre said.

A Dearth of Vets In a Country of Cattle

Public vet and livestock supervisor Raosaheb Salunkhe, working in the Danoli village of Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district, has helped save several cattle.

“During the peak of the outbreak, we were attending to as many as 80 cases daily,” Salunkhe said. “Many farmers spent a lot of money on private vets and consulted us much later, when the disease became severe.”

For the 302.79 million bovine population (as per the 2019 livestock census), India has 73,129 registered public veterinary practitioners and just 54 recognized veterinary colleges. That means 1 vet is available to care for every 4,140 cattle.

Of Khondre’s five cattle, another affected ox survived the disease. However, Khondre said the ox wasn’t the same after recovering. “After an hour’s work, he felt dizzy and kept losing balance.” Eventually, he sold the ox and bought a new one by paying another $181.

Khondre is now worried about his last stable income source drying up.

“Whenever the oxen worked in the fields, I got 800-1000 rupees ($10-12) daily. Now, with just one ox, I have to rent another, and even earning 400 rupees ($4.8) daily has become difficult.”

Buying another ox will cost him $1,000, which remains out of bounds with Khondre having taken a hit over recent years. Climate change events, such as incessant rainfall, heat waves and repeat flooding, have caused financial losses.

‘Everything Was Gone In a Few Hours’

About 30 kilometers from Jambhali village, Vitthal Kumbhar and his family recounted their own trouble with Lumpy. Of their five cattle, a 10-year-old indigenous cow and a bull calf were infected in November in their village of Bhendavade.

“Within a day, the swelling spread to all the legs,” 70-year-old Kumbhar described, “and at the same time, she was diagnosed with pneumonia.”

It took over two months for both animals to recover.

Jitendra Kurundwade, assistant commissioner of Kolhapur’s Animal Husbandry Department, explained how the district handled the contagious disease.

“There were cases where we were treating the same cattle for almost a month.”

Given the rapid movement of the virus, almost 31,000 cattle in 54 villages of Shirol block were at risk of being infected. (In India, several villages form a block. Jambhali village is part of Shirol block.)

“So, we decentralized the vaccination process,” Kurundwade said, “and vaccinated all of them in a week, which otherwise would have taken at least six months.”

Their efforts were successful, as Kurundwade shared that around 4,500 cows (14 percent) were infected and 150 succumbed. The death rate came to 0.48 percent of all cows and 3.33 percent of infected cows.

A Virus and Climate Change Wreak Havoc

When the cow first showed Lumpy symptoms, Kumbhar called a private doctor from a nearby village. The vet visited once and suggested seeking treatment from the public hospital, as private hospital care is pricey. Kumbhar’s son, Ganesh, 32, transported each of the four public doctors on his bike from the veterinary hospitals on a daily basis. Collectively, they provided more than 90 injections in a month.

Before Lumpy, the cow produced daily at least six liters of milk, which they served to the bull calf. Now, they are forced to buy milk from the market or use milk from other cattle, which eats up a source of their income.

Farmers reported affected cattle took at least four months to recover. A decline in milk production and in cattle strength affected farm operations.

However, India remains the highest milk producer, contributing 23 percent to global milk production. The country produced 210 million tons of milk in 2020-21.

The dairy sector employs 80 million rural households in India, with the majority being marginal landowning farmers and the landless. For millions of farmers, dairy remains the only source of income, as climate change continues to destroy crops. For instance, in just October, Kumbhar’s 1.5-acre field was among the 2.8 million hectares (6.91 million acres) destroyed during heavy rains in Maharashtra.

In 2021, floods devastated crops on 7.79 million hectares (19.24 acres) of farmland in India, affecting 38.56 million people and killing 64,880 cattle. Further, from January 1 to September 30, 2022, climate disasters continued to wreak havoc in India, with extreme weather events on 241 out of 273 days.

Kumbhar survived the 2019 and 2021 floods, 2022 heat waves, and erratic rainfall only because of cattle milk. However, his cow barely produces milk after Lumpy, and debt is mounting fast.

His wife, Sarasvati, in her mid-60s, put things in perspective by recalling the recent disasters in their village, Bhendavade, in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district. In October, hailstorms devastated the sugarcane she cultivated on 1.5 acres.

“Everything was gone in a few hours.”

Of the 100 tons she was expecting to cut that would have been worth $3,625, she only harvested 32 tons. “I wasn’t even able to recover the cost of production.” But that wasn’t the first time. In 2019, her family harvested just 30 tons of sugarcane. Then, in 2021, severe floods left them with 10 tons to cut. “Never in my life have I reported such low production,” Kumbhar said. “Despite using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the production isn’t increasing.”

Similarly, Khondre, too, recently harvested 21 tons of sugarcane on three-fourths of an acre, compared to at least 45 tons.

“It takes about 15 months for the sugarcane to grow completely. The only thing we got from this was more debt.”

Mounting Debt and Losing a ‘Family Member’

Recurring climate disasters have led to mounting debts, forcing Indian farmers to cut back on fodder (animal feed). A 40-kilogram sack of maize cattle feed costs at least $17 and lasts less than a week. “If we can’t sell the cattle milk and face repeated losses in the field, how will we buy this fodder?” Kumbhar asked. Nowadays, most of the time, he skips fodder, which affects milk production.

Last year, they took out a crop loan of $1,208 and will have to take on another loan this year. With 30 tons of sugarcane, he just managed to get $1,087. In normal climatic conditions, it would have fetched him at least $3,624. “In 15 months, I couldn’t earn a single rupee. Rather, I am making a loss,” Kumbhar said.

“Just an agriculture loan is not enough now. We’ll also have to take loans from friends and private moneylenders,” said his daughter-in-law, Poonam, 28. Her husband, Ganesh, could not go to work for two months as an operator at a grinding machine in a nearby factory.

“I spent most of the time with the cattle,” he said.

Similarly, last year, Rohit Koli, Khondre’s neighbor down the road, spent over two months with his infected Holstein Friesian cow. “I couldn’t sleep properly for over 45 days. The vets treated her every day for 25 days. But, still, we lost an important family member,” the Jambhali resident said.

“For the final six days, she ate nothing, after which she passed away,” he recounted. “It will cost at least 110,000 Rupees ($1,329) to buy another Holstein cow, which we can’t afford.”

Koli recalled the cow produced at least 24 liters of milk daily, fetching him over $8. Four of the seven cows he owns were infected, of which three recovered and one died.

“Lumpy is like a corona of animals,” Koli said, referring to the novel coronavirus of 2019 that mainly affected humans. “I’ve never seen so many cattle falling sick and dying.”

Meanwhile, every morning, Khondre, starts his day by looking for Khandya. “He was our family member,” he said, teary-eyed. When the ox died, more than 100 farmers gathered to mourn. “Everyone loved Khandya,” said Khondre, looking at the ox’s photo once again on his daughter-in-law’s smartphone.

“Majha bail (My ox).”

Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.

What left many grumbling at the 26th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP26) held in November in Glasgow was rich countries like the United States and those in the European Union striking down the Glasgow Loss and Damage Facility, a body created to address how to compensate developing countries for climate change-related losses and damages. Wealthy countries have been found to be most responsible for causing the climate crisis and face litigation as well as ensuing liabilities and payouts. 

But the demand to recognize loss and damage remains alive. A good indication being many climate-vulnerable developing countries have referenced loss and damage in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries are required to submit NDCs to detail their national action to address global climate change, including steps to adapt to a changing climate and the form of financial assistance needed to undertake such action. 

Small-Income and Developing Countries Hard Hit

A report published in October, 2021 found one-third of the 250 NDCs that were analyzed explicitly mentioned loss and damage. Most were from small-island developing states and least developed countries in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. The report was supported by the European Research Council’s Politics of Climate Change Loss and Damage (CCLAD) project. 

“NDCs are political documents and not just technical submissions [under the Paris Agreement],” said Elisa Calliari, a co-author of the report. 

Developed countries tend to focus on mitigation action, like the deployment of renewable energy. But that hasn’t been the case for the majority of the world’s states.

“Developing countries have pushed hard for the inclusion of adaptation in NDCs because, for them, this is more of a priority than mitigation,” Calliari pointed out. “So you can see the politics.”

For people living in an island nation like Sri Lanka, “key loss and damage impacts are felt in food systems and other vulnerable sectors, like the coastal and marine sector and water resources. These impacts have already resulted in migration interlinked with or induced by climate change among vulnerable communities,” said Vositha Wijenayake, executive director of the SLYCAN Trust, a non-profit think tank working in Asia, Africa and Europe. Its work focuses on climate change, biodiversity and ecosystems, sustainable development, and social justice. 

Sri Lanka is classified as a lower-middle income/developing country. Given that it is also an island, its exposure to climate-related risks is high. These two factors make it extremely vulnerable to climate impacts and the ability to withstand them.

So, Wijenayake added, it is important for countries most vulnerable to climate change that loss and damage is a “key component” in addressing climate change processes, both negotiations and climate action. And this is why Sri Lanka was among the first countries to have a separate section allocated to loss and damage commitments included in its first NDCs submitted in September 2016. Building on this, the updated NDC of Sri Lanka submitted last July includes a separate section on loss and damage.

Interestingly, the report says upper-income countries like Costa Rica, Chile and Uruguay also have cited loss and damage in their NDCs. 

And outside of NDCs, many developing countries have explicitly stated loss- and damage-related demands. For instance, consider India’s environment ministry laying out ahead of COP26, “There should be a compensation for expenses incurred, and it should be borne by developed nations.”

How to Fund Loss and Damage

A question that usually rears its head with respect to addressing loss and damage is how to “operationalize” it, or what processes and institutions could be set up at the global and national levels to address loss and damage. 

“[One way would be] to look at NDCs for a bottom-up approach to understand how countries themselves are looking at loss and damage,” Calliari said. 

Of the NDCs that explicitly mention loss and damage, around half specify loss- and damage-related responses and initiatives like data gathering, analysis and assessment, and institutional capacities to address loss and damage. For example, Sri Lanka’s NDC has a whole section on loss and damage. It mentions strengthening its weather and climate forecasting systems, plus improving data management to record loss and damage. Meanwhile, Honduras’ NDC puts forth a “gender-responsive agricultural insurance mechanism for loss and damage.”

Wijenayake also stressed “inclusive and participatory processes,” in which the voices of those vulnerable to climate change are taken into account in the national and international policy-making processes. As is “ground-level implementation,” she added. 

And so, country-specific NDCs could potentially be a good starting point to determine how to put mechanisms in place to address loss and damage on a global scale. 

Getting Polluting Countries to Pay

The other gap that exists today is how finance can be mobilized to fund efforts that compensate for climate change-related loss and damage. A recent study by the Stockholm Environment Institute offers potential solutions. 

The researchers propose finance should be provided based on the following:

• Solidarity,
• “polluter pays” principle that is based on “historical responsibility,” and 
• the established notion of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” (or CBDR-RC, for short) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 

CBDR-RC means that while climate change is a shared concern, rich countries with a history of emitting carbon—like the United States and those in Europe—have a greater responsibility to take climate action than the poorer countries.  

The “polluter pays” principle has only been used to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for environmental destruction. It implies more strict liabilities than “historical responsibilities,” which outlines broad principles based on past emissions. 

The authors stress a combined approach that deploys the principles of solidarity, polluter pays and historical responsibility, as well as using the framework of CBDR-RC, to finance loss and damage. 

A strictly liability-based approach would be “politically infeasible and communities cannot wait for years to prove the liability,” said Zoha Shawoo, an associate scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute as well as one of the authors of the SEI report. 

The research team also looked at methods of recovery and rehabilitation that communities would need after financing efforts to cover losses and damages. Those efforts can include planning the relocation of communities, assisting with migration and providing affected people with alternative livelihoods. Here, too, NDCs could help with granular details like national-level entities and processes that could assist local communities with issues like displacement and loss of livelihood. 

Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India. She had reported for Toward Freedom from COP26 in Glasgow.