#dnaEdit: Missing the woods

The heavy rains that have lashed Pune district’s Ambegaon taluka for the past few days might be the immediate cause of the landslide that has flattened the remote tribal village of Malin. But the immense quantity of muddy soil that has now buried the village located on the foothills points to deforestation being the culprit in this tragedy. The human toll — at least 30 persons killed and nearly 150 people still missing — is a wake-up call to the authorities on the fragile state of the Western Ghats ecosystem. Prima facie, the blame for the Malin landslide has been laid on the uprooting of  the forest cover to facilitate cultivation on the hill slopes, thereby loosening the top soil. Geologists have pointed out that the area was showing signs of landslides like cracks on the hillsides and houses and the tilting of trees for some years now.

In contrast to the Himalayas that have always been landslide-prone, the Western Ghats has been a relatively stable system. This is changing now and the blame must be placed on the alarming decline in the forest cover in the Western Ghats, with one estimate even pegging it as low as seven per cent. Unfortunately, the contradictory policies followed by state governments since Independence have not helped conservation efforts. States like Kerala and Maharashtra have encouraged farmers to migrate to the sparsely populated hilly and forested regions as pressure on farm land increased. This has clashed with forest department efforts to preserve biodiversity. It is sad irony that the Pune landslide happened a day after the Centre lifted the ban on mining in nearby Ratnagari and Sindhudurg despite the Madhav Gadgil-headed Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel’s(WGEEP) warning. Gadgil’s report also warned that mining, cultivation, road-building, dams and tourism-related constructions were severely destabilising the entire Western Ghats region.

But the WGEEP’s prescription that the farming community be involved in the conservation efforts was drowned amid the protests against its demand for notification of 75 per cent of the Western Ghats as ecologically sensitive. Though the government backtracked and appointed the Kasturirangan panel which halved the area declared ecologically sensitive, protests by those fearing that their lands and economic activities would be snatched away have continued. The government’s economic vision that equates development with economic growth and frowns upon  environmentalism has not helped either.

The Pune tragedy, like the 2013 Uttarakhand disaster, brings to the fore questions about the conservation strategy that the State must pursue. The failure to ban destructive economic activities in the Himalayas and the Western Ghats endangers the major Indian rivers. The benefit of hindsight tells us that when it comes to survival, the interests of local communities and the environment converge. People often reside in areas highly prone to landslides, land subsidence, flooding, cyclonic storms and earthquakes without realising the risks they are subjecting themselves to. Risk mitigation studies involving geologists, conservators, architects, planners and local bodies like panchayats are needed to understand and predict the course that natural disasters could take. Armed with a 48-hour alert, the Orissa government was able to evacuate people along Cyclone Phailin’s path. In contrast, the rainfall alert before the Uttarakhand disaster was poorly communicated. While such logistics are achievable, the more difficult task involves returning fragile ecosystems to their natural state and preventing the economic activities that portents disaster. In the wake of the Pune landslide, the Gadgil panel report must be taken up for consideration again.