Why there is a compelling need to implement a sound legislation to protect Western Ghats

The Western Ghats, a Unesco Heritage site, is one of the world’s eight most important biodiversity hotspots. Home to an enormous number of endemic species of flora and fauna, it is hailed as a “cradle of biological evolution”.

The Ghats determine the rainfall of the country as their towering peaks force clouds to release rain. The forests of the Ghats soak in heavy rainfall and become the fount for a number of perennial rivers flowing east and south — the Godavari, Cauvery and the Krishna rivers, to name a few.

Rapid and unchecked destruction of the Ghats due to deforestation, mining and industrialisation means that India could go the Brazil way — an already thirsty country on the verge of getting parched. And this will mean that the water tower of peninsular India will dry the throats of the 245 million people it serves.

But the numbers to back these claims simply do not exist because no efforts have been taken to quantify depletion of river water, for instance. And experts say this is being used as an excuse to turn a blind eye to the inconvenient truth of a crisis reaching a tipping point. “There are serious problems with proper data being available,” says Gadgil.

“A very large number of perennial springs have not been mapped in the country. In Goa, for instance, water resources available outside the area of mining have been mapped but not those within the areas being mined. It strikes one as almost deliberate,” he says.

A Tale of Two Reports

In March 2010, the then environment minister Jairam Ramesh set up a panel to recommend a unifying legislation to protect the entire Western Ghats. The committee, chaired by Gadgil, submitted its report in August 2011. The Gadgil Report recommended that the entire stretch of the Ghats, 1.37 lakh hectares, be declared as an Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) with the creation of three different zones.

In each zone, depending on the ecological sensitivity, only certain activities would be allowed. Further, locals inhabiting the forest areas of the Ghats would have the right to decide which industries they wanted to allow. A Western Ghats Ecology Authority was also recommended, which would grant permissions for industries and monitor the Ghats. But the report soon ran into trouble.

“A deliberate misinformation campaign was started by vested interests,” alleges Gadgil. “There are narrow vested interests working in the Western Ghats and making money. All governments are not aware of local situations and they are allowing this to take place. Shareholders in this have no say in the activities of corporates,” he adds.

The UPA government decided against making the report public, but following an order from the Delhi High Court, put up the report on its website in May 2012. Fear of displacement amongst people living in the Ghats led to a public backlash while Gadgil rushed to clarify that no one would be displaced. Kerala witnessed high-voltage drama, with violent protests being organised by the Left parties and the Syro Malabar Catholic Church, which has the largest following in the area.

In December 2013, a young man Anoop staging a sit-in demanding implementation of the Gadgil report, was killed. He succumbed to head injuries when a mob threw crude bombs and stones at the group. In August 2012 a nervous UPA, under pressure from the powerful mining and industrial lobbies as well as from a misinformed public, junked the Gadgil report and created another committee, chaired by space expert K Kasturirangan, to look into the recommendations made by the Gadgil committee. Kasturirangan’s team submitted its report in April 2013. It reduced the ESA to 43% of that recommended by Gadgil, an area of about 60,000 hectares.

Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment, who was part of the Kasturirangan committee, explained that they had excluded areas of the Ghats already under cash crop plantation, agriculture and settlements (see Gadgil Vs Kasturirangan). “The purpose was to remove already modified areas under private control from the protection regime, since governing these areas through permit and fiat systems would lead to unnecessary conflict,” she says. The Kasturirangan report also suggested a monitoring agency rather than a new body to oversee the Ghats itself. “We have submitted the report to government, now it is up to them to take action on it,” Sunita Narain told ET Magazine.

Costs of Dilution
In March 2014, the UPA government in its last days issued a draft notification asking the state governments of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to conduct physical verification and demarcate their own ESAs (see State-wise area…). It was clarified that this is a purely voluntary exercise by the states and not binding. The deadline to submit this to the Centre is April 15 this year.

So far only the state government of Kerala has submitted its ESA. While the Kasturirangan report had recommended an area of 13,108 sq km to be notified as ESA, the Kerala government whittled it down to 9,993.7 sq km. This exercise, point out experts, has further diluted an already weak set of recommendations.

“Major disturbances in the Western Ghats are due to tourism and pilgrimage,” says ecologist Ranjit Daniels. “The pressures of tourism and industry are pushing towards the periphery of the forest. We will continue to see increased man-animal conflict. There will increasingly be islands of protection surrounded by hostile area, which will just not work,” he adds. Officials at the ministry of environment and forests did not respond to ET Magazine’s queries despite repeated requests.

“The immediate need of the hour is to implement rule of law,” argues Gadgil. “There are a lot of laws to protect our environment but all of these are being sabotaged. None of the people-oriented legislations are being adhered to but are allowed to be sabotaged. As far as democracy in India goes, people are only able to vote.

As far as development related decision-making is concerned, they are not allowed to participate. The people are the stakeholders — they must make their own decisions about what industry or plantations to allow or disallow in their areas,” he says.

Others feel that any action has to be taken with a long-term view of sustainable ecology and industrial development. “The immediate need is for the Gadgil report to be disseminated for a wider understanding and studied for merits,” says Daniels. “It needs to be reconsidered for adoption.” Until then, he says, more tigers like WT_ MD_41_M will become maneaters or will perish without food, as a result of the destruction of their natural habitat. And India will almost certainly be parched in the near future.

(The writer is a freelance journalist based in Chennai)