State govt flouted norms for irrigation project: UN body

A conservation body affiliated with the United Nations has claimed that the Maharashtra government has initiated the Rs. 600-crore Sarambala irrigation project in the rich wildlife habitat in Western Ghats without seeking the mandatory approvals from the central government, Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 12, 2013, 01:52:56 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Mumbai

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A conservation body affiliated with the United Nations has claimed that the Maharashtra government has initiated the Rs. 600-crore Sarambala irrigation project in the rich wildlife habitat in Western Ghats without seeking the mandatory approvals from the central government.

Nicole Duplaix, chair of International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)-Otter Specialist group, has alleged that the project does not have the necessary “forest, wildlife and environment clearance” from the Union ministry and was being developed in violation of environmental laws.

The Union environment ministry gives three approvals for big projects if they involve forest and rich wildlife zones. Sarambala, coming up in Sindhudurg district 500 km south of Mumbai, requires all the approvals as the project would lead to submergence of 150 hectares of forest land and is also home to endangered species such as the Oriental small-clawed Otter and Royal Bengal Tigers.

In his communication to environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan, Duplaix also alleged that the mandatory public hearing with the locals was not conducted.

Duplaix claimed that the project was conceived for the benefit of the mining industry in the region and would further entail environment, forest and wildlife destruction in the area.

What worries IUCN — the body responsible for listing endangering species across the globe — is that the project could mean the extinction of Oriental Otter, spotted for first time in Maharashtra recently.

The IUCN has placed conservation of four Asian otter species as its top conservation priority since 2004 as their numbers were falling due to increased poaching. “The presence of the Oriental small-clawed otter in the project-affected area is significant to our long-term conservation efforts,” said Duplaix, who teaches at Oregon State University in United States.

Asking the ministry to re-evaluate the project, the IUCN said tigers have been spotted in the district recently and the project area is part of the Sahyadri-Konkan wildlife corridor. Building the project can adversely impact free movement of tigers and otters, both of which are protected under schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act.

The issue is likely to be discussed at the next meeting of the standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife headed by environment minister Natarajan.

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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