Petition for Declaring ESA Unconstitutional

• 09 Nov 2020

Why in News

Recently, a Kerala-based NGO for farmers has moved the Supreme Court (SC) to declare the draft notification on the Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) unconstitutional.

• It has sought a direction to the government to not implement the Madhav Gadgil and Kasturirangan committees’ reports on the conservation of the Western Ghats.

Key Points

• Background:
  
  • The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), also known as Gadgil Committee, and the Kasturirangan Committee, a High-Level Working Group, were constituted to conserve and protect the biodiversity of Western Ghats while allowing for sustainable and inclusive development of the region.
  • They recommended that identified geographical areas falling in the six States of Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu should be declared as ESA.
  • A draft notification related to the same was issued in 2018 mentioning the areas to be notified in the ESA.
• Issues Highlighted by the Petition:
  
  • The draft notification would declare 123 agricultural villages in Kerala as ESA converting the semi-urban villages in the region into forests with no facilities and roads. It will affect 22 lakh people and cripple the economy of Kerala.
  • The Centre had wrongly branded people who had been residing in the Western Ghats area, as the “destroyers of the biodiversity and agents of ecological damage.”
  • Apart from that, it suggested that ESA in Kerala should be restricted to reserved forests and protected areas.
• Gadgil Committee:
  
  • It recommended that all of the Western Ghats should be declared as the ESA with only limited development allowed in graded zones.
  • It classified the Western Ghats into ESA 1, 2 and 3 of which ESA-1 is a high priority zone where almost all of the developmental activities (mining, thermal power plants, etc) should be restricted.
  • It also recommended the constitution of Western Ghats Ecology Authority (WGEA), as a statutory authority under the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) with the powers under Section 3 of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.
  • It was criticised for being more environment-friendly and not in tune with the ground realities.
• Kasturirangan Committee:
  
  • It sought to balance the development and environment protection in contrast to the system proposed by the Gadgil report.
  • The committee’s major recommendations were:
    
    • Instead of the total area of Western Ghats, only 37% of the total area to be brought under ESA.
    • A complete ban on mining, quarrying and sand mining in ESA.
    • No thermal power projects to be allowed and hydropower projects to be allowed only after detailed study.
    • Red industries (highly polluting industries) to be strictly banned.
    • Exclusion of inhabited regions and plantations from the purview of ESAs making it a pro-farmer approach.

Ecologically Sensitive Areas

• Eco-Sensitive Zones or Ecologically Fragile Areas are located within 10 km of Protected Areas, National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries.
• ESAs are notified by the MoEFCC under Environment (Protection) Act 1986.
• Aim: To regulate certain activities around National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries so as to minimise the negative impacts on the fragile ecosystem encompassing the protected areas.

Way Forward

• The matter pertains to the debate of ‘Development versus Conservation’, which highlights that destruction in the name of development should not be encouraged and sustainable development should be given priority.
• A proper analysis based on scientific study followed by consensus among various stakeholders by addressing respective concerns is required to solve the differences in a timely manner.
• Delays in implementation will only accentuate degrading of the prized natural resources of the country hence, with a holistic view of threats and demands on the forest land, products and services, devising strategies must be developed to address them.

Source: TH