Centre directs states to notify eco zones by Feb 15

Cracking the whip, the environment ministry has threatened to disallow any commercial activity within 10 sq kms of 650 national parks and sanctuaries -- home to endangered species of India -- if they failed to notify ecologically sensitive areas, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 7, 2013, 01:29:17 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Cracking the whip, the environment ministry has threatened to disallow any commercial activity within 10 sq kms of 650 national parks and sanctuaries --- home to endangered species of India --- if they failed to notify ecologically sensitive areas.

The ministry in 2011 declared its intention to have eco-fragile zones as part of wildlife conservation strategy for safety of the animals as “shock-absorbers” for protected areas.

In 2005, he asked the state governments to notify 10 sq kms of area around these wildlife areas as eco-fragile zone where no commercial activity would be allowed.

In 2011, the ministry issued guidelines for declaring the zones mentioning the commercial activities allowed and prohibited such as mining.

More than ten years down the line, only few states such as Haryana, Gujarat, Mizoram and Assam had submitted proposals to declare the zones in the wildlife areas covering 4.86% of the India geographical landscape.

Some states like Goa refused to accept the proposal saying it would hamper its economic growth and termed its interference with the powers of the state government.

As the result of the delay, some protected areas are now part of urban localities such as Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai and Guindy National Park in Tamil Nadu, thereby making declaration difficult.

The period of ambiguity has witnessed mushrooming of resorts, hotels and commercial establishments around many protected areas.

Environment secretary V Rajagopalan in a letter to state chief secretaries has asked to submit proposals for declaring eco-sensitive zones latest by February 15 as last opportunity before the ministry cracks the whip.

“In case the state and union territories fail to submit the proposals, the activities prohibited as per the 2001 guidelines would stand implemented within 10 kms of national parks and sanctuaries,” he said.

His letter comes after the environment ministry rejected suggestions of Supreme Court panel to have different levels of eco-sensitive zones depending on the geographical spread of a protected area. The view was supported by many state governments.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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