Who is responsible for Wayanad?

The most difficult assignment of my life was when the former government asked me to be a member of the K Kasturirangan committee, set up to review the recommendations of the Madhav Gadgil committee on the Western Ghats. I am sharing this, because we need to discuss why there is such steadfast opposition to measures to protect the region. This is even as people who live there witness devastations like the horrific landslide in Wayanad that has taken over 400 lives. They know from their experience that the region is ecologically fragile. Then why do they contest any steps to ban environmentally destructive activities in the region? 

But first, let me explain my dilemma as a member of the Kasturirangan committee—in civil society parlance, this group was set up to dilute the crucial recommendations of the Gadgil committee. We were in the dock even before the first meeting. The Gadgil report had (rightly) asked for large swathes of the Western Ghats, spread over six states, to be declared an ecologically sensitive area (ESA), but this was not acceptable to any of the state governments. The report was rejected. So, I knew this would be a tightrope walk: how to find a resolution so that protection could happen and with urgency?

The Gadgil committee recommended that 137,000 sq km—80 per cent—of the Western Ghats should be notified as ESA. It sub-categorised this protected region into three zones and provided permissible activities for each zone. This created apprehensions that areas under plantations and farming would be subjected to government control. Knowing Gadgil as I do, I know this was not his intention. He is an ecologist, who is steeped in the politics of land and people. He argues for community rights and for people to be partners in conservation.

Sadly, this is how the report got interpreted, largely, I believe, because of the politically powerful interests that are behind rapacious "development" activities in the region. Also, there is popular deep-seated resentment against how the directions on such restricted and permissible activities are managed on the ground. In other areas that have been declared as ecologically sensitive zones (ESZ), local people, particularly the poor, have been subjected to harassment and denial of rights. In all these cases, the formula has been to list the prohibited activities for different land uses and then to set up a bureaucratic system to manage their clearances. It has only led to alienation of local communities, who then vote against conservation.

The Kasturirangan committee recommendations, which came after confabulations with state governments and others, were issued in November 2013 under section 5 of the Environment Protection (EP) Act. The recommendations, which were notified, made two major changes to the Gadgil report. One, it reduced the area of ESA to 59,940 sq km. It used satellite imagery to find that 60 per cent of the Western Ghats was under plantation, agriculture or human settlements. These were classified as cultural landscape and we argued that however necessary, it would be difficult to reverse this changed land use. So, the effort was to protect what remained as natural landscape. These included the already protected forests but also villages that had more than 20 per cent area under natural landscape. The directions under the EP Act list the villages that are in this protected regime of the Western Ghats.

Two, instead of issuing a comprehensive list of what would be allowed or not, the report recommended a ban on the most destructive activities. These comprise all mining, including quarrying and sand mining; all polluting industries, including thermal power plants; building projects above 20,000 sq m and new township projects. This was not enough, but the aim was to stop what was most destructive and to ensure that this could be done even with the weak and compromised regulatory systems we have today. This notification is in operation and environmental clearances cannot be granted to any of the banned activities across the protected Western Ghats—but with one crucial change, which concerns the state of Kerala.

The Kerala government objected to the notification and asked for changes in the protected areas, arguing that its own committee had found differences on the ground. It argued that villages in the natural landscape (as defined by Kasturirangan committee) could not be classified as protected. Instead, it redrew within the village boundary an area that would be protected and also an area that would not. In this way, a village which was notified under Kasturirangan natural landscape could have an area under ESA and also be allowed to undertake, say, mining or quarrying within its boundaries. In 2018, the Union government issued an amendment to its 2013 direction, taking out 3,115 sq km from the Western Ghats’ protected regime, as demanded by Kerala.

There are two key issues here that I would like to discuss further with you. One, did the Kerala amendment contribute to the tragedy in Wayanad? And two, in this age of climate change, what development and conservation model will ensure popular support?