No more SEZs, hill stations: The Gadgil report

Those clamouring for Special Economic Zones to be established in the Western Ghats are not going to like this. An expert panel which recently studied the ecological imbalance in the region has recommended that no SEZs should be set up in the region.

The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), which submitted a two-volume report on August 31, 2011, has listed out sectoral guidelines for conservation of the Western Ghats, reckoned to be a biodiversity hotspot. The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) had refrained from releasing the report into the public domain, but would now have to after being ordered by the Central Information Commissioner (CIC) to do so before May 5.

The recommendation on SEZs has been made in its guidelines on land use in the Western Ghats. The panel has also said that no new hill station should be established in the area. It has come down heavily on diversion of land, and said that public lands should not henceforth be converted into public lands either. For all settlements and built areas to be developed areas, certain types of areas would be no-go areas. These would include water courses, water bodies, special habitats, geological formations, biodiversity rich areas, and sacred groves.

The 14-member group, headed by eminent ecologist Prof Madhav Gadgil, studied land use, water use and forest use patterns in the entire Western Ghats region, and expressed concern at the manner in which all laws were being flouted to cater to vested interests.

The group said for the highly sensitive areas it had demarcated as Ecologically Sensitive Areas 1 and 2 (ESZ1 and ESZ2) changes in land use should not be permitted from forest to non-forest uses or agricultural to non agricultural. Exceptions could be made in cases where agricultural land was being changed to forest or when existing village settlement areas would need to be extended to accommodate increase in the population of local residents.

To put an end to the plunder of natural resources in the Western Ghats, the WGEEP said that for existing built structures such as hotels and resorts in ESZ1 and ESZ2, the tourism policy of the MoEF would have to be refined by the proposed Western Ghats Ecological Authority (WGEA). Road and other infrastructural expansion plans would have to be submitted for environmental impact assessment (EIA) by the local planning authority before the execution of such projects. This would have to be done by assessing the ecological costs and public benefits.

Across the Ghats, local authorities should be made responsible to for developing regional systems for handling hazardous, toxic, biomedical wastes as well as recyclable materials. The panel has recommended decentralised water resources management plans at the local self government level, besides protecting high altitude valley swamps and water bodies.

The catchment area treatment plans of hydroelectric and major irrigation projects should be taken up to improve their life span, river flows and water quality should be improved by scientific riparian management programmes involving community participation. The WGEEP also asserted that inter basin diversions of rivers should not be allowed.

The report dwelt at length on the state of forests in the Western Ghats, and recommended that the Forest Rights Act (FRA) should be implemented in its true spirit by reaching out to people to facilitate their claims. It also called for the community forest resources provisions under the FRA to replace all current joint forest management programmes which had failed to deliver.

The panel noted the widespread ecological damage caused by planting of Eucalytus trees, especially in Kerala and Karnataka, and sought an end to the monoculture of exotic species.