From: "CORE" laifungbam@coremanipur.org
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 03:41:01 +0530
Subject: [jivika] Change in view on jhuming need of hour: ICIMOD

Guwahati, Friday, October 8, 2004 NORTH EAST

Change in view on jhuming need of hour: ICIMOD

SHILLONG, Oct 7 - The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) has called for a change in the 'negative bias' against shifting (Jhum) cultivation which was the dominant land use system across the north-eastern India. Besides North-east, this type of cultivation is prevalent across much of the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, Eastern Bhutan, Myanmar, Cambodia, northern Thailand, Vietnam and some parts of China, ICIMOD director general J Gabriel Campbell told a press conference here yesterday.

He said across Asia, more than 400 million people, most of them indigenous, were dependent on tropical forests and a majority of them practised shifting cultivation (SC) needed to be "re-examined". Advocating a change in the conventional wisdom and such type of cultivation, which terms shifting cultivation as bad, Campbell said: "This makes us ask... are 400 million people dependent on SC in Asia wrong in the way they cultivate their land?"

"We have realised the need for new research, reappraisal of old research, a need for us to listen to the new voices and old wisdom of indigenous people, a need to incorporate new values and understanding that have been coming in globally," Campbell said. He said scientifically there was enough proof that SC has a 'good potential' to provide many benefits. In all of South Asia, an estimated 10 million hectares of land were under this type of cultivation.

Phrang Roy, Assistant President of the Rome-based International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which funded many community management projects about natural resources in the North-east, said: "We would like the states of the region to have a relook at its policies regarding SC and come out with new ones".

Advocating the need to change the perception that SC was bad, North Eastern Council secretary Kamal Taori referred to misconceptions about breast-feeding in the 60s as manifested in the advertisements during that time. This was proved wrong later, he pointed out. - PTI