Wildlife board refuses approval to Navi Mumbai airport

Maharashtra government’s ambitious Navi Mumbai airport plan will have to counter a new challenge -- bird threat -- to see its take-off, as environment ministry’s wildlife specialist committee on Wednesday refused to approve the airport, Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 21, 2013, 23:32:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Maharashtra government’s ambitious Navi Mumbai airport plan will have to counter a new challenge -- bird threat -- to see its take-off.

An environment ministry’s wildlife specialist committee on Wednesday refused to approve the airport -- envisaged to handle around 40 million passengers a day by 2030 -- on the ground of its proximity to Karnala, the only bird sanctuary in Western Ghats.

The project proponent City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) of Maharashtra wanted approval for the airport saying there was no bird threat to the airport as the bird sanctuary was around 10 kms away.

They also claimed that the slow speed to the aircrafts while landing and take-off will not have any impact on the birds.

The local ecologists and Maharashtra chief wildlife warden differed.

Mumbai based ecologist Gebi Goenka said impact of the airport on birds was not limited to Karnala. “The airport is surrounded on three sides by bird habitats and the question is about safety of the passengers also,” he told HT. “The airport plan has been approved without any bird study, a gross violation”.

The corporation had got environment clearance from the ministry two years ago without revealing that a 12.11 sq km bird sanctuary was within 10 kms of the airport’s boundary. Any project within 10 kms of a protected area needs mandatory wildlife approval.

Geonka exposed CIDCO on this aspect forcing it to seek the wildlife approval now. The Maharashtra wildlife board headed by chief minister Prithviraj Chavan had approved the project this January with some conditions.

The Maharashtra Chief Wildlife Warden admitted that the airport would have adverse impact on the birds but sought Centre’s approval considering national importance of the project.

When the proposal was considered by the standing committee of the national board for wildlife on Wednesday the members expressed their reservations over having an airport so close to a home to many migratory bird species and ecologically sound area.

Before taking a final call, the committee decided to conduct a site inspection to gauge the possible impact of the airport on birds and vice-versa. The environment ministry would ask the committee members to conduct inspection.

It is not for the first time that Navi Mumbai airport got stuck with the environment ministry. In 2010, the ministry had refused to give environment clearance to the project considering its impact on mangroves and creeks.

After a lot of brouhaha, comprise was announced by then environment minister Jairam Ramesh, then civil aviation minister Praful Patel and Maharashtra CM Chavan at Maharashtra Sadan.

Navi Mumbai airport is aimed to ease pressure on Mumbai interational airport and is scheduled to be built by 2017.

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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