60-day period to submit suggestions on Western Ghats ESA draft ends
The 60 day time period to submit objections/suggestions to the draft Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) notification came to an end on Monday.
The 60 day time period to submit objections/suggestions to the draft Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) notification that is aimed to protect and conserve almost 60,000 sq km of the biodiversity rich habitat across six states, came to an end on Monday.
While it will take the Union environment ministry to consider the inputs it has received during the two-month public comments period, certain developments suggest notification of the Western Ghats Eco-Sensitive Zone area will not happen immediately.
The tenure of a high-level committee under Sanjay Kumar, former director general and special secretary at the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), has been extended according to those familiar with the matter.
The Terms of Reference (ToR) for the committee was to examine views of state governments concerned, keeping in view the fragility of the area; deliberate whether the village should be considered as a unit for declaring ESA; assessing whether forest areas can be demarcated separately and see whether revenue areas can be excluded from the notification; examine profile of activities that are to be prohibited or regulated depending on the economic needs of the area and finalise the Western Ghats notification.
Further, they said ESA notifications may also happen in a phased manner by individual states instead of a blanket notification for entire Western Ghats. “The committee will continue to work and engage with states on this,” a person familiar with the matter added.
Among several concerns raised by experts and citizens, environmental policy organisations, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) and Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, flagged that the notification allows large hydropower projects including pumped storage and run-of-the-river projects, linear infrastructure ones that could be detrimental to the environment.
Policy experts from the two organisations also recommended that local governments, especially gram panchayats, have greater decision making powers in the implementation of ESA.
“Large hydropower projects including pumped storage and run-of-the-river projects appear under the regulated category in the Draft Notification. Similarly, there are no incremental conditions prescribed with respect to linear infrastructure projects in the Draft Notification,” the submission stated adding that: “Dams and barrages, collectively referred as grey water infrastructure, and linear infrastructure projects, such as highways, tunnels, railways, canals, pipelines and transmission lines, impose significant and often irreversible adverse impacts on soil morphology, hydrology, local biodiversity and ecosystems.. they contribute to lowering the overall resilience of the landscape, even when carried out ostensibly with ‘safeguards’ in place and/or undertaking mitigative/biodiversity offset strategies.”
Such projects can fragment previously intact landscapes and lead to degradation of habitat, loss of habitat/genetic connectivity, the submission said. The construction and operation of large dams and hydropower projects alter natural river flow regimes, experts underlined.
HT reported on August 2 that the Union environment ministry has issued a fifth draft notification on the Western Ghats ESA, dated July 31, which is similar to the draft notification that was issued on July 6, 2022, and which expired in June this year. The draft came 13 years since the first such demarcation was recommended by a panel led by eminent ecologist Madhav Gadgil in 2011, and was issued following devastating landslides in Kerala’s Wayanad that have left over 250 dead, over hundreds injured, and dozens missing.
The draft covers 37% of the Western Ghats, an area of 59,940 square kilometre of natural landscape of Western Ghats and represents a continuous band of natural vegetation extending over a horizontal distance of 1,500 km spread across six states of the Western Ghats region including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
If finalised, the notification means there will be a complete ban on mining, quarrying, and sand mining; thermal power plants; polluting industries; all new and expansion projects of building and construction with a built-up area of 20,000 square metres and above; and all new and expansion townships and area development projects with an area of 50 hectares and above or with a built-up area of 150,000 square metres and above, among other restrictions.
ATREE and Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy also recommended that the implementation of the ESA notification must strengthen the existing decentralised governance mechanisms in the region through synergies with the Guidelines for Preparation of Gram Panchayat Development Plans, 2018, Rural Area Development Plan Formulation and Implementation (RADPFI) Guidelines, 2021 and SVAMITVA Yojana (Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas). The two organisations have several other recommendations especially on sustainable tourism and development-oriented initiatives such as sustainable agricultural practices, forest-based livelihoods, handlooms and handicrafts and other traditional and cultural practices.
The draft was issued soon after Wayanad, in the Kerala Western Ghats, was roiled by landslides that killed almost 300 people.