Message for Mr. Ratan Tata

Dear Mr. Ratan Tata,

The Nano is the realization of a dream that you have dreamed along with millions of other Indians. While the Nano is certainly something you’d like to be remembered for, your port in Dhamra could undo all that the Tatas have stood for and built their reputation on.

For two years in a row, ever since dredging began in Dhamra, there has been no mass-nesting of endangered Olive Ridley Turtles in the area. If they disappear, it will be forever. And that’s just why Greenpeace believes the port must stop now.

98% of your own customers polled recently also think the port should stop now. Over 100,000 of them have already emailed, faxed and called you, asking that the port should stop now. And over 200 respected scientists – 25 of them from IUCN’s Marine Turtle Specialist Group – say the port must stop now.

But construction continues day and night, threatening to bring an already endangered species closer to extinction.

Mr. Tata, we call upon you to uphold the legacy that your company has built painstakingly over 100 years. Place the planet at par with profits, because there are some things that money just can’t buy back.

Greenpeace

Greenpeace like to release this ad in every edition of Times Of India in the next one week. Do you want to sponsor this ad?

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Comments

Greenpeace is a green terrorist organisation that bullies ,blackmailers and slanders.We would rather trust Ratan Tata than a bunch of goons!

@radhika Do you have proof for calling Greenpeace a terrorist organisation?

What else do you call people who carry on a campaign of disinformation against a man who has done more for people than these people?If they really have proof ...let them take it to court and get it stopped.Why carry on a disinformation campaign against the more respected man n the country?

He may have done more for people but obviously at the cost of a species. If you look at the other campaigns available on this site which also show the problem which is occurring you will see that it is not only Greenpeace that have seen the problem and is trying to fight it. In regards to you saying that Greenpeace is blackmailing Mr Ratan Tata; when you blackmail someone you are threatening to tell the public about something unfavourable, yes this is probably something he does not wish to tell anyone because it is likely to upset people, however it is not really blackmail as they have immediately shared this information with the public; so get your terminology right before slagging of an organisation which helps those who cannot speak up for themselves. I’m sure that if turtles could talk then they would let Mr Tata know themselves how pissed off they are, they have enough to worry about when hiding their eggs from predators without humans jumping on the bandwagon. So stop talking bulls**t radhika.

Read this article from the Times of India....

Below belt? Green group uses Nano to hit Tata on Orissa turtles
6 Apr 2009, 0018 hrs IST, Amit Bhattacharya, TNN

NEW DELHI: When Tatas finally launched the Nano late last month, something else

went piggyback riding on the wave of global attention the car
was getting. On March
23, the day of the launch, full-page ads appeared in two international papers with a prominent picture of the ‘cheap’ car. The ad had nothing to do with Nano - it was a high profile attempt by NGO Greenpeace to get international attention to bear on Olive Ridley turtles.

The motive of Greenpeace was obvious: to pressure Tata Group chairman, Ratan Tata, into stopping work at the Dhamra Port coming up in Orissa, about 25km from Gahirmatha, one of the two mass nesting sites of the Olive Ridleys on the state’s coastline.

It was one of the costliest campaigns yet mounted to ‘save’ the turtles, claiming the port was threatening to take the Olive Ridleys closer to extinction. It raised the alarm - ever since dredging activity began two years ago to clear the approach to the port, the turtles hadn’t come for mass nesting at Gahirmatha.

In a dramatic twist, even as the ad appeared in Financial Times and International Herald Tribune, tens of thousands of female turtles made their way to Gahirmatha beach for nesting. According to Siddhanta Das, conservator of forests, Bhubaneswar circle, the mass nesting at Gahirmatha started on March 21 and continued till March 24. In these four days, around 1.7 lakh turtles had nested at the site, Das said.

“The advertisement was in bad taste inasmuch as it carried wrong information,” said Santosh K Mohapatra, CEO of Dhamra Port Company Limited, a 50:50 joint venture of Tata Steel and Larsen & Toubro. Greenpeace changed its tack - it claimed the nesting did not mean that the turtles were any less threatened.

Not surprisingly, Greenpeace’s campaign has again triggered the debate on whether extreme positions such as these should be invoked when there’s little evidence to support it. In the case of the Olive Ridleys, such positioning by a section of conservationists goes back over 30 years.

As turtle expert Kartik Shanker, assistant professor at IISc, Bangalore, puts it: “In 1978, T A Davis and Rajesh Bedi wrote about the imminent extinction of Olive Ridleys in Orissa. Jack Frazier (pioneering American turtle specialist) wrote then of the dangers of crying wolf. He was right; the Ridleys did not go extinct. Of course, some drastic conservation actions were required in the early 1980s. More recently, another scientist, Nicholas Mrosovsky, wrote of the dangers of hype.”

Shanker argues that invoking the threat of extinction takes the focus away from long-term conservation strategies which would be more helpful in preserving the species.

Most conservationists fear that the upcoming port could adversely affect the Olive Ridley turtles and their nesting areas. At the other end of the divide, pro-development proponents argue that the port will bring much-needed development to a backward region.

On their part, Tata and DPCL say they are sensitive to the ecological importance of the area. “We have not only done our due diligence, we have engaged reputed institutions to constantly monitor the impact of construction and dredging in addition to taking scientific advice from the International Union for Conservation of Nature during the construction. IUCN is also preparing a comprehensive environment management plan for the operation phase,” Mohapatra said.

Some green groups allege that IUCN, a respected international organization, is being used by DPCL to “greenwash” the port project. Ashish Fernandes of Greenpeace, who is heading the NGO’s Dhamra campaign, said, “IUCN’s role is limited to mitigation. We demand that work at the port stop and an independent group of scientists study the issue.”

When talks between DPCL and green groups broke down in February, both sides had agreed on the independent study. DPCL said it was ready to stop work for certain periods if the scientists required it. The environmentalists insisted on complete stoppage of work. “There’s no point in getting an independent study commissioned on our own, as this too will be contested,” says Mohapatra.

With the current level of trust deficit between the two sides, what’s fast disappearing is a middle ground which could possibly have accommodated the interests of all, including the turtles.

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Green Peace has been extremely unfair here and used “a big man” as a punching bag to get publicity.

If they have enough proof...they should try going to the court because Indian courts are quite proactive with environment issues. The fact that they choose to fight it in this way shows that they don’t have enough proof.

Mr. Ratan Tata,

I LOVE YOU.......................tons!! hope i get to meet you someday............you drive me NUTS!!!!!

Love you always, Keep well!!!!

Your die hard fan,
Jennifer
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