Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area

Why in NEWS ?

• A Kerala-based NGO for farmers moved the Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional a draft notification of the Centre demarcating 56,825 sq km spread across six States as ‘Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area’.

About

• The ambit of the draft notification of October 3, 2018 covered Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
• The petition has also sought a direction to the government to not implement the Madhav Gadgil and K. Kasturirangan committees’ reports on the conservation of Western Ghats and demarcation of ‘no-go’ zones.
• The petition said the draft notification would affect 50 lakh people who would be affected across the six States, 22 lakh reside in Kerala alone and cripple the economy of Kerala.
• Twenty-two lakh are in the 123 villages of Kerala alone with a population density of 800 individuals/sq km, and the remaining 28 lakh are in 4,033 villages of remaining five States.
• The draft notification to declare “123 agricultural villages in Kerala as ecologically sensitive area (ESA) villages and the recommendations based on Kasturirangan report (and earlier Gadgil report) on land use, farming practices, animal husbandry, forestry, industries, infrastructure development, power generation, transport, tourism, etc, would convert the semi-urban villages in the region into forests with no facilities and roads.
• The plea said the Centre had wrongly branded people who had been residing in the Western Ghats area, following government norms on agricultural practices, as the “destroyers of the biodiversity and agents of ecological damage.”
• The 123 villages are located in 10 parliamentary constituencies in Kerala. They form the backbone of the cultivation of rubber, coffee, black pepper, cardamom, etc.
• It said the villages in developed Kerala were not tribal hamlets as in other States.
• The petition said ESA in Kerala should be restricted to reserved forests, protected area and World Heritage sites.

What is Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA) ?

• It is the area which have been notified by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC), as areas around the Wildlife Sanctuaries, National Parks and Protected Areas as requiring more protection due to their fragility.

Objective

• To manage and regulate the activities around these areas with the intention of creating some kinds of ‘shock absorbers’
• To provide a transition zone between the highly protected and relatively less protected areas.
• To give effect to Section 3(2)(v) of the Environment Protection Act, 1986 which restricts the operation of industries or processes to be carried out in certain areas or to maintain certain safeguards to operate industries.

Government initiatives

• In the past, the Central Government constituted a High-Level Working Group under the Chairmanship of Dr Kasturirangan to conserve and protect the biodiversity of Western Ghats while allowing for sustainable and inclusive development of the region.
• The Committee recommended that the identified geographical of western ghats falling under six States of Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu may be declared as Ecologically Sensitive Areas and a draft notification was issued in October 2018 mentioning the areas to be notified in the ESA.

Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area

• The government has notified 56,825 square km area in the Western Ghats (WG) region as ecologically sensitive area (ESA) for first time in 2017.
• The notified land is spread over six states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
• In the ESA, all kinds of mining activities, thermal power plants and highly polluting industries would no longer be allowed.
• The existing mines shall be phased out within five years from the issue of final notification or on the expiry of the existing mining lease, whichever is earlier.
• All new ‘Red’ category industries and the expansion of such existing industries shall be banned.
• Other kinds of projects and activities, like operation of hydropower plants, and ‘orange’ category of industries, will be strictly regulated in the ESA.
• New expansion projects of building and construction with built-up area of 20,000 square meters and above shall be prohibited too.

The Western Ghats

• The Western Ghats of India is one of the global biodiversity hotspots owing to its endemism of flora and fauna.
• The northern part of this biodiversity hotspot, along with the Konkan region, is considerably different from its southern and central parts on account of lesser precipitation and extended dry season.
• It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is one of the eight "hottest hot-spots" of biological diversity in the world.
• A total of 39 properties including national parks, wildlife sanctuaries were designated as world heritage sites - twenty in Kerala, ten in Karnataka, five in Tamil Nadu and four in Maharashtra.
• A notable geographical feature of the Northern Western Ghats is the presence of plateaus and cliffs that display maximum endemic species, unlike forests and these ghats are more or less continuous throughout their North to South stretch.
• Thus, the demarcation of an ESA is an effort to protect the fragile eco-system from indiscriminate industrialisation, mining and unregulated development.
• Two committees – Gadgil and Kasturirangan – were appointed in the last eight years to identify the areas that needed to be kept out from such activities.

Gadgil Report

• The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), also known as the Gadgil Commission has designated the entire hill range as an Ecologically Sensitive Area.
• The panel has classified the 142 taluks in the Western Ghats boundary into Ecologically Sensitive Zones (ESZ) 1, 2 and 3.
• It recommended that no new dams based on large-scale storage be permitted in Ecologically Sensitive Zone 1
• For Goa, the committee suggested an indefinite moratorium on new environmental clearances for mining in ESZ 1 and 2.
• No new polluting industries, including coal-based power plants, should be allowed in ESZ 1 and 2.
• The existing red and orange category industries should be asked to switch to zero pollution by 2016.
• Gadgil Committee asked for bottom to top approach i.e., from Gram sabhas to top, rather than a top to bottom approach.
• It suggested the formation of a Western Ghats Ecology Authority (WGEA), a statutory authority which enjoys the powers under the Environment (Protection) Act.
• The major criticism faced by Gagdil Committee was that it was more environment- friendly and is not in tune with the ground realities.

Kasturirangan Report

• The report has sought to balance the two concerns of development and environment protection, by watering down the environmental regulation regime proposed by Gadgil.
• It seeks to bring just 37% of the Western Ghats under the ESA zones — down from the 64% suggested by the Gadgil report.
• The report distinguishes between cultural and natural landscape.
• It said that cultural landscapes, which include human settlements, agri fields and plantations, covered 58.44% of the Western Ghats.
• It identified 90% of the remaining natural landscape area marked as an ESA. The panel called for a complete ban on mining, quarrying and sand mining in this area.
• It also made several pro-farmer recommendations, including the exclusion of inhabited regions and plantations from the purview of ESAs.
• The major criticism of the committee is it used remote sensing and aerial survey methods for zonal demarcation of land in WG.
• The use of this erroneous method had caused inclusion of many villages under ESAs.