SC committee for dilution of eco-sensitive zones

The environment ministry is in a dock over a Supreme Court committee’s recommendation diluting safe homes for wildlife around 668 national parks and sanctuaries and paving a way for more developmental activity.

Updated on: Oct 28, 2012, 16:00:59 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The environment ministry is in a dock over a Supreme Court committee’s recommendation diluting safe homes for wildlife around 668 national parks and sanctuaries and paving a way for more developmental activity.

The ministry had asked the state governments to notify 10km around national parks and sanctuary as eco-sensitive zones (ESZ) in January 2011 but most state governments had been reluctant as such a notification would have restricted developmental activity around the wildlife zones.

Terming the delay in finalising the zones as a reason for its recommendations, the Supreme Court appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC) has divided national parks and sanctuaries into four categories depending on their respective area and recommended eco-sensitive zones for each category.

The CEC has brought the limit of eco-sensitive zones from 10 kms to maximum of two kms for category A national parks having area of more than 500 sq kms. Only 73 of 668 parks fall under this category.

For category B, parks with an area between 200 sq kms to 500 sq kms, the zone will be one kms. As many as 115 parks fall under this category.

In case of category C, with 85 parks between 100 to 200 sq kms, the CEC has suggested that the zones should be up to 500 meters. In D category parks, where majority of parks (346) having area less than 100 sq kms, the eco sensitive zone will be up to 100 meters.

“The suo moto recommendations of the CEC are neither on the directions of the Supreme Court nor with any legal jurisdiction, fraught with several legal infirmities and thus not acceptable,” said wildlife conservationists in a letter to environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan.

The court had asked the environment ministry to submit an affidavit with respect to the CEC recommendations. Ministry officials say the CEC’s formula would kill the concept of eco-sensitive zones and said accepting the recommendations would be “difficult”. However, the officials agreed that the states governments were reluctant to declare the zones because of huge mining activity around the parks.

In Kaziranga and Corbett national parks, mining is allowed within 10 kms of the park’s boundary and state governments have not been able to stop the mining despite repeated instructions from the ministry.

The recommendations, if accepted will allow any sort of industrial activity outside the smaller eco-sensitive zones, says wildlife conservationists. Major thermal power plants, steel units, aluminum refineries and mines would be established beyond a mere 100 meters of some parks which would be a certain disaster for the wildlife habitats and corridors, they added.

The permission of the standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife would be required for mining in the eco-sensitive zones.

Categories
A -- more than 500 sq kms, parks 73
B --- between 200 to 500 sq kms, parks 115
C --- between 100 and 200 sq kms, parks 85
D --- less than 100 sq kms, parks 346.

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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