Why this move by Tamil Nadu could further cripple fragile Western Ghats

It seems the devastating landslides that hit Kerala’s Wayand last month and left hundreds dead have failed to wake up the states that house the ecologically sensitive Western Ghats.

Since 2014, these six states, including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, have rejected five of the Centre’s proposed draft notifications declaring large parts of their territories as Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESAs). The very day after the Wayanad landslides, the Centre urgently sent the sixth draft notification, seeking to protect a total 56,800 sq km of the Western Ghats.

However, in at least one of these states, Tamil Nadu, the draft includes only large areas of reserve forests as ESAs but excludes high-risk zones, including private plantations and tourist areas, say sources. And these drafts have been made based on the proposals received from the states.

Who loses what?

The Western Ghats stretch over 1,600 km along India’s western coast, from the Tapi River to Swamithoppe in Kanyakumari. UNESCO recognizes them for their high biological diversity, making them one of the world’s eight “hottest hotspots” of biodiversity.

The proposed ESAs in the draft notification are distributed as follows: 20,668 sq km in Karnataka, 17,340 sq km in Maharashtra, 9,993.7 sq km in Kerala, 6,914 sq km in Tamil Nadu, 1,461 sq km in Goa, and 449 sq km in Gujarat.

Once the ESAs are declared, state governments will have to enforce a ban on mining, quarrying, and the establishment of red-category industries and thermal power projects in these areas. New infrastructure projects will require comprehensive impact assessments before approval.

Purpose defeated

An expert told The Federal on condition of anonymity that Tamil Nadu’s draft includes only a few high-risk zones and omits densely populated private lands, tourist spots, and commercial zones. It leaves out around 50 villages and tourist destinations, said the expert.

This is in gross disregard of the 2013 Kasturirangan Committee’s recommendations — based on which the drafts are supposed to have been made — which included 135 villages.

Renowned environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta argued that when the government fails to include thickly populated private lands and villages and tourism spots, the notification loses its efficacy and purpose.

Will backfire: Expert

‘’There is no purpose if the state government includes reserve forests and leaves out villages and private lands. Thickly populated areas and plantations are the ones that would attract a high risk [of ecological disasters] compared to the already-protected reserve forest areas,” Dutta pointed out.

“Even if the states fail to include the villages and specific zones mentioned in the Kasturirangan report, the Union government could actually pull the strings and ask the states to fall in line, but that is very unlikely to happen given the relationship between the states and the Union government,” he added.

He added that the Centre would review the draft notifications submitted by the states and is vested with power to reframe those.

‘’Due to pressure from tourism companies and industries and to avoid protests in villages in the forests, the state governments will not want to ‘dirty’ its hands. But that will actually backfire on them, as unregulated development projects and concrete structures in the Western Ghats are always at great risk. The Union government is also unlikely to be stringent on this issue.”

Scientist livid

Experts such as scientist TV Ramachandra of the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science criticized the earlier drafts proposed by the six state governments, saying they looked no different from documents designed by political parties.

“It’s shocking that state governments are in sleep mode and waiting for calamities to happen one after another. Experts like us were already miffed with the Kasturirangan report for reducing the size of the recommended ESAs compared to the Gadgil Committee report. But state governments are not even ready to include high-risk zones and are only focused on ‘development projects’ and earning revenue from tourism projects,” Ramachandra told The Federal.

The Madhav Gadgil Committee, the first to be established to identify critical zones for protection in the Western Ghats, recommended in its 2011 report that nearly 64 per cent of the region must be declared as ESA that would undergo minimal development. However, due to resistance from the states, the Centre later constituted the Kasturirangan Committee, which, brought the recommended ESA down to 37 per cent.

Recurring costs

Ramachandra pointed out that the non-implementation of ESAs would not only affect livelihoods but also increase the burden on the state governments, which would be forced to rebuild the affected zones after every disaster.

“Kodagu in Karnataka suffered a massive landslide in 2018, Wayanad in 2024, and the Nilgiris too have faced several landslides. The Union and state governments are now orchestrating a new drama with the draft. I’m not hopeful about the implementation of these drafts too. The agenda of both the state and Union governments is to not implement the ESAs,” the scientist fumed.

State banks on alert system

When The Federal tried to get a response from Tamil Nadu Forest Minister M Mathiventhan on the non-inclusion of private lands and tourism hubs in the ESA notification, he did not respond. Forest Department Secretary P Senthil Kumar also did not respond despite several calls and messages.

Tamil Nadu Environment Minister V Meyyanathan merely said an exclusive meeting had been convened to discuss the safeguarding measures for the Western Ghats after the Wayanad landslide.

“We had a meeting and sought expert opinion to get advanced technology for predicting heavy rain and cloudbursts. We want to develop an alert system by which local residents could be evacuated to safe zones from high-risk ones during an emergency such as landslide,” he said.

When asked about private lands and villages being left out of the ESA draft notification, he said the Forest Department would be the right authority to provide those details.