Dr Amrita Patel conferred with the Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar
Anand, 5 June 2008: The President of India today conferred the Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar on Dr. Amrita Patel, at a ceremony held on World Environment Day, in Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. The Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar is the highest award conferred by the Government of India to individuals in recognition of their outstanding contribution to the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Though Dr. Patel is better known for her contribution to the development of the dairy sector, and is at present the Chairman of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), this award recognises her many years of service in the conservation of nature and natural resources which is less known outside conservation circles.
Dr. Amrita Patel said “I am honoured to receive the Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar as it reinforces and recognises the efforts made by the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) in putting in place the process of coordinated human effort and governance towards the conservation of land and water resources.” Dr. Patel urged that “the foremost concern must be to ensure that we sustain the productivity of the basic resources – soil, water and the country’s natural vegetative cover, and the biodiversity it sustains and the ecological processes that support the foundations of our existence. To ignore the overriding importance of this, is to put the Nation’s future and particularly the poor in the gravest jeopardy”.
She said that one needs to understand the energy, commitment and time that go into such a process of rejuvenation. From understanding the lay of the land and what lies beneath, to carefully helping the vegetation regenerate, helping Nature’s process of healing the land and recharging the aquifers, takes time. As importantly, from establishing faith between families and between neighbouring villages to building on local wisdom and rationale, to energising a conviction for a common good, takes time.
While Dr. Amrita Patel has served on the Board of Governors of WWF India, Indian Institute of Forest Management and several committees on conservation, her most significant contribution has been as the Founder Chairman of the Foundation for Ecological Security. Amidst all the din and contemporary debates over conservation of nature Dr. Patel’s leadership has remained focused on translating conservation ideals into ground realities. The Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) works towards the ecological restoration of degraded landscapes through a wide range of village level institutions. FES actively seeks to centre-stage an ecological agenda in an otherwise economically dominated worldview, and reorient progress with a strong conservation and social justice perspective. With a rich experience of over two decades in restoring forest cover through village communities the strength of FES lies in crafting institutions around common property resources. FES’s work is based in different agro-ecological settings comprising the semi-arid rangelands of the Aravallis, the grasslands of Malwa Plateau, the tablelands of the Deccan Plateau to the mixed deciduous forests of the Eastern Coast.
FES assists village communities in managing and governing 85,800 hectares of revenue ‘wastelands’, degraded forest lands, and Panchayat grazing lands through more than 1200 village level institutions such as Panchayats, Village Forest Committees, Gramya Jungle Committees, Tree Growers Cooperatives, Van panchayats, etc. Interventions have begun to yield positive results in several locations - improved soil and moisture regimes have enhanced crop productivity and in some cases made double cropping also possible. In drought prone areas where people had to migrate for water for livestock the activities of FES have resulted in assured availability of water for both human consumption and livestock. Besides being geared to expand its activities to another 75 thousand hectares in the next five years FES aims to focus on issues concerning dryland ecosystems and livelihoods, participatory landuse planning and evolving institutional templates for conservation of natural resources at landscape level.
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