Thursday, November 10 2005 20:19 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today (Nov 10, 2005) assured environmentalists that the bill on tribal land rights only seeks to record the rights of local people and will not harm the environment.

"I would like to assure conservationists that the Tribal Land Rights Bill will seek only to record the rights of the people that have gone unrecorded," he said at the 'Green Governance Awards 2005' function of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS).

"This should give them a sense of security and involve them in protecting the natural resource base. People who live in close proximity to our forest resource must become their protectors," he said.

The effort was to ensure that people at local levels are involved in the conservation of water, forests and other life-support systems.

"But this cannot and will not be done at the cost of our environment," he said.

"We have people living in lands which were subsequently declared as forests and sanctuaries. The role of local populations in managing the environment has been historic," he said adding even today forest fires are put out by officials with the help of Adivasi inhabitants and not through helicopters dousing from above.

"But sadly many of these very people do not have rights over their land," he said.

"There was a need to promote an informed, rational and humane dialogue on what must be done for conservation and environmental and wildlife protection," he said.