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At last, Western Ghats get World Heritage Site tag

India manages to pull it off at World Heritage Committee meeting after intense lobbying.

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Subir Ghosh l Bangalore
The Western Ghats have finally been granted UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) status. The tag came late on Sunday at the 36th session of the World Heritage Committee (WHC) which is meeting in St Petersburg in Russia. Altogether 39 sites that dot the Western Ghats landscape will be part of the region that has been designated as WHS.

The WHC decision reportedly came after intense lobbying by the Indian government. The Western Ghats almost did not make it to the WHS list after the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which assesses proposals for sites of natural significance, asked UNESCO to defer granting the WHS tag to the Ghats in May.

Had the WHC abided by the IUCN’s recommendations, the Western Ghats would have had to wait for another three years before it could apply for the status again. Even last year, the proposal of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) was almost shot down. India, however, managed to keep the proposal afloat.

India, incidentally, is a constituent of the 21-member WHC.
Last year, the WHC instructed India to “harmonise arrangements between the ‘Western Ghats Natural Heritage [Management] Committee’ and the ‘Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel’ (WGEEP) and strengthen community membership and input through the establishment of the proposed ‘Western Ghats Natural Heritage Conservation Authority’ and other relevant advisory committees”.

Then came the government’s dithering on the recommendations of the 14-member WGEEP. The voluminous and incisive report of the panel was virtually shelved, till the Chief Information Commissioner asked the MoEF in April to put the report in the public domain. The ministry went to the Delhi High Court, but the latter stood by the CIC.

During the year that went by, the government not only failed to act on the contentious issues of management and boundaries, it was also pulled up by the IUCN on both the criteria on which the official proposal was based—that of the ecological processes of the Western Ghats and the biodiversity of the area. When the Indian team went to St Petersburg, the WHS status for the Western Ghats was almost a lost cause.
Given the hopeless backdrop, the Indian government has been able to pull off a coup of sorts.

Sunday’s development now puts the ball back in the court of the Indian government—it needs to act on the WGEEP report. The IUCN, in fact, asked India to take into account the recommendations of the WGEEP since the panel had been specifically tasked to compile scientific data and define ecologically sensitive areas through consultation.

IUCN has asked the Indian government to “establish improved coordination and integration between component sites, particularly through the preparation and implementation of an overarching management plan or framework for the serial property as a whole and through the establishment of the ‘Western Ghats Natural Heritage Conservation Authority’.”

Among other things, the report of the WGEEP headed by eminent ecologist Professor Madhav Gadgil had faulted the government on the virtual non-implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act. The IUCN had concurred indirectly, and remarked that “the protection status of at least parts of the renominated property does not meet the requirements set out in the Operational Guidelines, principally due to concerns about land tenure and the strength of legal controls over development.”

The Indian government, for now, has got the coveted status. India will have little option but to adhere to the Operation Guidelines if it wants to retain the tag.

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