The Union government on July 31 issued a draft notification for the sixth time, to classify parts of the Western Ghats in six states as Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESAs). The draft was prepared based on reports of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), known as the Madhav Gadgil report, and the High-level Working Group led by Dr K Kasturirangan, incorporating suggestions made by stakeholder states. Now the draft notification is open for comments for 60 days. The draft covers 56,800 square kilometres in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa and Gujarat.
Western Ghats are internationally recognised as a global biodiversity hotspot. A chain of mountains running parallel to India’s western coast covering an area of around 140,000 square kilometres in a 1,500 km long stretch it is interrupted only by the 30 km Palakkad Gap.
ESAs are the regions identified for their ecological significance and require specific conservation measures to protect it. When a region has been identified as ESA, the government would impose restrictions on economic activities such as quarrying, mining, and large infrastructural development in these areas. The ESA draft was first notified in 2014 but could not be codified as law because of the lack of consensus and had to be reissued several times since then.
The fifth version of the draft was issued in July 2022. While open for comments for 60 days, the draft is valid for 725 days and this ended on July 31 2024. So the government has reissued it now.
Only July 29, 2024, the Western bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) directed the MoEFF&CC to finalise a timeline to declaring Western Ghats areas as ESAs.
Sridhar Radhakrishnan, an environmentalist in Kerala, told TNM that both the states and the Union government are not in favour of implementing the notification. “Basically, there is reluctance from both states and the Union because it would impact many projects that involve areas of forest or ESA areas and that will directly affect their projects. Powerful interest groups like the quarry and contractor lobbies are also against it,” he said.
The draft notification demarcates 9,993.7 square kilometres of land in Kerala as ESA. They include 131 villages from 12 districts - Wayanad, Thrissur, Thiruvananthapuram, Pathanamthitta, Palakkad, Malappuram, Kozhikode, Kottayam, Kollam, Kannur, Idukki and Ernakulam. Among them Idukki has the largest number of ESA villages (51), while Wayanad has 13 villages spread across taluks of Mananthavady, Sulthan Bathery and Vythiri. Vellarimala, where the recent landslides originated, is also included in the ESA list.
Kerala and ESAs
When the Gadgil committee report was released it led to widespread protest from residents of affected villages, farmers organisations and political parties. Farmers feared that the restrictions in villages demarcated as ESAs would limit their agricultural activities and negatively impact their livelihoods. There were also widespread fears of being displaced. Some political and social groups exacerbated fears by spreading exaggerated or inaccurate information about the impact of the ESA proposals, which demarcated them into three zones, ESZ1, ESZ2 and ESZ3.
Many local communities also felt that there was no adequate consultation with people who would be affected. This led to mistrust and opposition.
The Syro Malabar Church, which has a significant influence in Kerala, particularly among the farming communities in the Western Ghats, opposed the recommendations due to concerns about the social and economic impacts on their congregations.
The misconceptions regarding the recommendations made by both WGEEP and the HLWG panels haven't ended and several groups and political parties continue opposing it. Rassak Chooravelil, General Convener of the Idukki Land Freedom Movement (ILFM), an organisation in the forefront of protest against restrictions in ESA villages said the Gadgil report was “initially presented at St Petersburg in Russia” and “was not meant to be practically implemented but to utilise foreign funds.”
“If the report was meant to be implemented, they should have openly discussed it with the local government bodies or residents. However, there was no discussion or efforts to communicate this with the people,” said Rassak.
Rassak said the persons who wrote these reports and the government which assigned them were not aware that Western Ghat areas are inhabited by seven crore people. “Environmental activism should not be against human rights,” he said.
While the Gadgil panel discouraged cultivation of annual crops on slopes exceeding 30 degrees and phasing out of chemical pesticides and fertilisers and made fervent calls for promoting organic agricultural practices it did not seek a ban on monocropping. However many still believe it did, like Rassak.
The Gadgil committee proposals are impractical, Rassak said. “Recommendations like ban on monocropping, use of chemical fertilisers, restrictions on agricultural activities on slopes more than 30 degrees will affect people directly. It also recommended a ban of all industrial and non-industrial operations which come under the red category of pollution control board, which includes hospitals and workshops. This would negatively impact residents of ESA villages,” he said.
While the Gadgil panel discouraged cultivation of annual crops on slopes exceeding 30 degrees and phasing out of chemical pesticides and fertilisers and made fervent calls for promoting organic agricultural practices it did not seek a ban on monocropping as alleged. The Pollution Control Board categorises hospitals above a certain size as red based on waste water generation and incineration. Hotels which generate more than 100 KLD of waste water also come under Red category.The Gadgil panel had called for a ban on Red and Orange category industries in ESZ1 and ESZ2.
The HLWG headed by Kasturirangan panel disallowed construction of buildings with more than 20,000 square metres inside areas identified as ESAs besides approving bans on mining, quarrying, construction of thermal power plants and highly polluting industries specified by WGEEP. Though the Kasturirangan report did not allow townships of any size in these areas, the draft notification permitted townships to the size of 49.9 hectares. The HLWG identified 123 villages across 12 of the 14 districts of Kerala as eco-sensitive areas.
Both the Gadgil and Kasturirangan panels recommended complete ban on mining, quarrying and sand mining in ESAs.
Another concern was the Kasturirangan panel recommendation to stop cultivation of monocrops. The committee chaired by Oommen V Oommen, constituted by the Kerala government, said this would affect tea, rubber and coffee farmers.
“What the Kasturirangan report did was to reduce the number of affected villages, whereas the Gadghil report would have affected 625 villages in the state,” Rasak added.
The Oommen V Oommen committee had demarcated 9,109 square kilometres as forest ESA and 886.7 as non-forest ESA. It pointed out that most of the 123 ESA villages in Kerala have a population density of more than 250 people per square kilometre. The Union government in 2014 issued the draft notification based on this report.
“The Oommen V Oommen committee reduced the ESA area to 9,900 square kilometres, down from the original figure, which was around 13,000 sq km (Kasturirangan report). Out of these 9,900 sq km, approximately 9,100 sq km is reserved forest, which didn't need recommendation to be protected. The recommendation by the Oommen committee regarding around 800 sq km area was accepted by the Union government to issue draft notifications for the past 10 years,” Sridhar Radhakrishnan said.
He suggested adding more appropriate villages in the draft notification, which was mentioned in the Kasturirangan report and omitted by the state committee report. “Oommen Chandy was the chief minister when the Kasturirangan report came out. He wanted to see how much it could be diluted and the Oommen V Oommen literally executed the job for him. Oommen V Oommen, a biologist, was supposed to stand by the science of it. Many of these areas should have been protected, as mentioned in the Kasturirangan report, but they have not been incorporated into Oommen V Oommen’s report, subsequently in the draft notification too. I think those areas should also be included in the new list of protected areas,” he added.
In 2018, Kerala constituted the PH Kurian Committee to review recommendations regarding forest and non-core areas. According to reports, this committee's recommendations reduced the number of villages considered non-core areas from 123 to 92. Additionally, this committee removed 1197 square kilometres of forest land from ESAs and recommended designing 8.656 square kilometres to designate as ESAs. However, the union government is considered the Oommen V Oommen committee report to prepare the draft notification.
Stand by UDF and LDF
Both the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] led Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala have opposed ESA proposals though a handful of MLAs from the UDF, including the current Opposition leader, spoke in support of Gadgil panel recommendations.
It was the UDF government, led by Oommen Chandy, which constituted a committee to review WGEEP and HLWG panel reports and suggest modifications. Their report was later accepted by the Union government. In 2014, the CPI(M) won the Idukki Lok Sabha seat by fielding Joyce George, who was in the forefront of anti-Gadgil protests as leader of the High Range Samrakshana Samithi (HRSS).
Recently, after the Wayanad landslides sparked a debate on Gadgil panel proposals, the Chief Minister said it is something that is regularly brought up in Kerala and this was not the right time to discuss it. “There are people who say the 2018 floods may not have happened if the proposals were implemented but we need to consider issues like increase in carbon emissions and the consequent global warming,” he said.