With no resolution yet in sight on demarcating the final extent of Western Ghats eco-sensitive areas (ESA), the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) pushed ahead the deadline for a third time and issued a fresh draft notification.
On March 10, 2014, the environment ministry had issued a draft notification identifying 60,000 sq km of area in Ghats as ecologically sensitive and the ministry had to finalise the draft in 545 days, which was due on September 9, 2015. To supersede that the ministry came out with a notification on September 4 and the latest one will replace the 2015 one.
The fresh draft notification, based on the report of the K Kasturirangan-led high-level working group, once again proposed to notify 56,825 sq km areas as ESA and ban mining, quarrying, sand mining, new thermal plants, red category industries and big townships.
In 2014, following demands from the six Western Ghats states — Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Goa and Tamil Nadu — the MoEFCC allowed them to physically verify the ESAs as demarcated by the Kasturirangan report. All states, with the exception of Tamil Nadu, submitted their ground truthing reports in 2015, but the Centre is yet to take a call on them.
In December 2015, DNA had reported that Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka and Goa had rejected most findings and recommendations of the Kasturirangan report, pushing for opening the Ghats to development and commercial activities. In their ground truthing reports, they drastically cut down the ESA area, recommending the retention of only 19,702 sq km as ESA and releasing the remaining 36,285 sq km for development.
Besides the recommendations of the states in the ground truthing reports, recently, the Kerala government requested the Centre to reduce the state’s ESA area further. While it has already been reduced to 9,993.7 sq km as compared to 13,108 sq km, as suggested in the Kasturirangan report, the state has now requested to reduce 887 sq km of non-forest land.
A UNESCO heritage site, the Western Ghats is a 1,600 km-long mountain range running all along the west coast of India. It covers the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat, approximately 1,40,000 sq km. These mountains are home to number of endemic plants and animal species.
