Conflict, Conservation, and Cooperation Across the India-Bhutan Border

Jun 22, 2020 | Umika Chanana
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In the article, Dr. Anwesha Dutta construes the evolution of separatist movements that stimulates the unbridled extraction of forest resources, impacting the lives and livelihood of the local population, and also constructing headway for militarised conservation, especially across the trans-boundary region of India and Bhutan. The area is susceptible to conflict and violence (concurrent to environmental conservation) and the reserve forests in the sensitive space across the borderland act as a constant site of collision between ethnic communities and state actors. The article highlights that the maximum number of plantation drives have been carried out by the Ecological Task Force in the sensitive region of Manas, on the brink of the Indo-Bhutan border. Counter-insurgency operations that materialise in the region of dense forests have vast implications on flora and fauna, shaping uncertainty over landscape connectivity in the two countries.