NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured environmentalists on Thursday that the proposed legislation on tribal land rights would seek to record the rights of the tribal people and involve them in protecting the environment.

``This would give them (the tribal community) a sense of security and involve them in protecting the natural resource base. But this would not be done at the cost of our environment,'' he said after giving away the Bombay Natural History Society Green Governance Award here to Godrej and Boyce Manufacturing, Tata Chemicals and 8 Mountain Division of the Army.

People who lived near forests must, therefore, become their protector. The effort must be to ensure that people at local levels were involved in conservation of water, forests and other life-support systems. "This cannot, and will not, be done at the cost of our environment," Dr. Singh said.

The ongoing debate on the tribal land rights bill, proposed to be introduced in Parliament, was a good example of the kind of discussion on how the dual imperatives of safeguarding people and safeguarding our natural habitat was managed.

Role of local population

The role of the local population in managing the environment had been historic. Sadly, many of these very people do not have rights over their land.

Dr. Singh said the issue of replacement of lost forest cover could be approached through a people-centric movement. For instance, people living in the fringe areas of forests (mostly tribals) faced a major problem of securing a sustainable livelihood.

A massive programme of greening the degraded forests could be undertaken again using the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. "These were new and valuable opportunities, and to make success of these opportunities we need the support of all creative elements in our civil society."

The country should measure up to the challenge of devising growth paths and development options that could abolish poverty without reaching the western standards of per capita income.

Dr. Singh pointed out that conservation of nature and protection of environment was a collective task involving citizens, the corporate sector and all other stakeholders in society. The collective strategy, therefore, should be focus on developing indigenous responses.

``Our economic life exerts enormous pressure on the growth process at a time when there is a clamour for jobs and new investment.

Developing countries like India, therefore, will have to strive to avoid the development trajectory of the developed industrial economies because these have been far too wasteful and harmful to the environment,'' he said. The Government faced a complex challenge where the need was to constantly engage in trade-offs.

Traditionally Indian society had not been environmentally destructive. "A few countries could match our traditional systems of water storage, local forest management, conservation and recycling used resources in a static population. When you superimpose upon the system a rapid population growth made possible by a sharp decline in death rate due to advances of medical sciences, the traditional system fails to deliver," he said.

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