Analysis The god of the mountain and Godavarman: Net Present Value, indigenous territorial rights and sacredness in a bauxite mining conflict in India Leah Temper ⁎, Joan Martinez-Alier ICTA, Fac. Ciencias, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 08193, Spain abstract article info Article history: Received 29 April 2013 Received in revised form 23 July 2013 Accepted 17 September 2013 Available online 30 October 2013 Keywords: Cultural distribution conflicts Mining Sacredness Environmental justice Indigenous rights Forests This article provides an environmental and institutional history of the highly politicized and contested process of setting a Net Present Value (NPV) for forests in India, in a context of increasing conflicts over land for develop- ment, conservation and indigenous rights. Decision-making documents in the Supreme Court and in one specific case of a bauxite mining conflict involving Vedanta in the Niyamgiri hills are studied to come to conclusions about how economic valuation of forests has moved through the political process. We argue that establishing NPV for forests is neither conducive to conservation nor to environmental justice for the following three reasons. The technical and political process of setting prices deepens and reproduces structural inequalities with negative dis- tributive effects. NPV encourages economistic decision-making procedures that exclude participation. Finally NPV does not recognize or take into account cultural difference or plural values. We thus conclude that economic valuation of forest products and services has not managed to “save” forests in India and is not an effective or vi- able strategy for expressing the value of forests or for environmental conservation and environmental justice activism. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction On 18th April 2013, the international press announced that the Supreme Court of India had dealt a blow to the British Vedanta company's plans to dig for bauxite on land deemed sacred by local peo- ple in the state of Odisha. 1 The Supreme Court rejected a request from the company to end a ban on the proposed mine. The local councils would have three months to state whether they wanted the mining to proceed. The Court ruled that if the project affects the inhabitants' right to worship their deity known as Niyam Raja, that right has to be protected. 2 This article explains the background to this court decision, that might be reversed depending on local and national politics. For the time being, religion has trumped the economy. Some would argue however that a proper economic accounting would align the eco- nomic values with the religious values. This article questions wheth- er the establishment of a monetized regime of management for the loss of natural forests is an effective method for protecting forests, and whether it could even be counterproductive by simply enabling the powerful to buy the rights to destroy forests and “compensate” for it through afforestation plantation projects or by putting money into a fund. The argument is developed through the examination of proceedings in the Supreme Court of India over several years before 2013 dealing with the use of the payment of Net Present Value (NPV) of forests. The arguments by activists around “properly done” cost- benefit analysis are also analyzed, in this conflict over bauxite min- ing in the Niyamgiri hills of the Dongria Kondh in Odisha, India. This article is thus concerned with what former Indian Environ- ment Minister Ramesh (2011) called the “two cultures”, referring to C.P. Snow's original divide between the sciences and the humani- ties but converted in Indian politics into a debate over environment and development. Ramesh proposed that the opposition between environ- ment and development could be bridged by implementing regulatory norms and by proper economic valuation, saying: “What we cannot measure, we cannot monitor and what we cannot monitor we cannot manage.” (ibid). This article attempts to show that contrary to Ramesh's intent, proper economic valuation is not a panacea to resolve the con- flict between conservation, environmental degradation and the rights of India's “ecosystem people” (Gadgil and Guha, 1992; Guha, 1989, 2006). The methodology for determining the NPV includes environmen- tal goods and services provided by the forest ecosystem — timber, non timber forest produce, firewood, fodder, grazing land, tourism, carbon sequestration, water cycling and flood control, biodiversity and more. However, the results of the exercise depend on doubtful economic valuations of non-market goods and services as there is no agreed upon “proper” way to monetize environmental attributes and NPV values are driven by the choice of a discount rate that is arbitrary. Ecological Economics 96 (2013) 79–87 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: leah.temper@gmail.com (L. Temper). 1 Also known as Orissa. The name was changed in November 2011. 2 Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, 18/4/2013, http://www.independent.co.uk/ news/world/asia/indian - supreme - court-rules-to-protect-sacred-hills-against-uk-mine- operation-vedanta-resources-8578954.html accessed April 2013. 0921-8009/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.09.011 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ecological Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon