Exclusive: 13 years later, protection for Western Ghat areas in 3 states almost ready

Activities like new mining and quarrying projects, setting up of thermal power plants, operation of most-polluting red-category of industries, new and expansion projects of buildings and construction with a built-up area of 20,000 square metres or above, are proposed to be completely banned or heavily restricted.

The Centre’s original draft notification had come in 2014, and has undergone five revisions since then, but disagreements with the state governments on the areas earmarked for declaration as ESAs within their jurisdictions have not been fully resolved. Even now, the states of Kerala and Karnataka have been holding out. Kerala wants its own area to be further reduced, while Karnataka has been continuing to question the entire exercise.

Gujarat, Goa and Maharashtra are the states where the areas to be demarcated are almost agreed upon, top officials from the Environment Ministry said. Tamil Nadu, the sixth affected state, does not have any major divergences on this issue. The 6,914 square km of ESA proposed in the state is smaller than the areas identified in neighbouring Kerala and Karnataka. But the extent is yet to be finalized.

Though the negotiations with Kerala and Karnataka are continuing, the Centre is learnt to be preparing to notify the ESA in the states where an agreement on this issue has either been achieved, or is close to being finalised. This is different from the previous attempts in which the Centre had issued draft notifications for ESAs in all the states together.

In the last draft notification, the sixth one, issued in 2024, a total area of 56,825.7 square km was proposed to be demarcated as ESA. This was lower than the nearly 60,000 sq km originally identified as ESA by the Kasturirangan panel. The reductions have happened mainly in the highly urbanised state of Kerala, at the repeated insistence of the state government.

A final notification, when it happens, will give more legal teeth for protecting the fragile biodiverse area of the Western Ghats under the Environment Protection Act, 1986, and prohibit activities that threaten the sensitive environment of the region.

The Western Ghats are one of the eight ‘hottest biodiversity hotspots’ and the mountain chain was inscribed as a UNESCO world heritage site for being the exclusive home of hundreds of plants and animals.

Twelve years after the first draft, the Centre is set to finalise Ecologically Sensitive Areas in parts of the Western Ghats, beginning with states where differences have largely been resolved.

Its fragile ecosystem and forested landscape influence the monsoon system, and is the source of several west-flowing rivers such as Krishna, Godavari, Cauvery, Mandovi, Periyar and Sharavathi, giving it the tag of the water tower of peninsular India.

In November 2013, the Centre had already issued directions under the Environment Protection Act, 1986 based on the Kasturirangan report, prohibiting new or expansion projects under mining, quarrying, sand mining, thermal power, large constructions and townships categories, as well as red-category highly polluting industries. Final ESA notifications provide further legal safeguards for the fragile region.

The Centre’s move to finalise, and notify, the ESA at least in the states where agreements have been reached comes quite close to the expiry of the last draft notification issued on July 31, 2024. This draft is valid until July 27 this year. The current term of the expert committee, which is negotiating with the state governments on this issue, is also slated to end in July.

The Indian Express learnt that Gujarat is the only one which has given its final consent to declare the ESA within its boundaries. An area of about 449-470 square km, spread across 64 villages, in the state is likely to be demarcated as ESA. Gujarat’s consent is subject to the request that it will be allowed to mine minor minerals in non-forest areas falling within this ESA, and that the demarcation of the ESA would not affect ongoing constructions and other activities in these areas.

Efforts to demarcate ecologically sensitive areas within the Western Ghats began in 2010 with the formation of the Madhav Gadgil committee. Gadgil, one of India’s best-known ecologists, submitted his committee’s report in August 2011 and recommended that the entire area of Western Ghats, a total of 129,037 square km of land, be declared as ESA, with varying degrees of restrictions on activities based on relative fragility.

More than 56,000 sq km across six states are proposed to be notified as ESA, with new mining, thermal power plants and highly polluting industries facing strict curbs. 

Following protests by every affected state, the Centre referred the report to a high-level working group led by former ISRO chairman K Kasturirangan in August 2012.

After a ground-truthing exercise, the Kasturirangan panel suggested that an area of about 60,000 square km be declared as ESA. This was based on the categorisation of ‘natural landscapes’ which largely represented a contiguous band of vegetation over 1,500 km of the Ghats, as opposed to ‘cultural landscapes’ which were already dominated by human settlements, agriculture, plantations.

Based on this recommendation, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) issued the first draft notification in 2014, seeking comments and consultations from state governments and other stakeholders.

The negotiations between the Centre and the state governments have continued since then, without reaching a full agreement.

With a consensus on the extent of ESA proving to be elusive due to political concerns over prohibition and regulation of activities, the Centre has had to issue six iterations of the draft notification. An expert committee was constituted by the Centre in 2022 to examine the objections and alternate ESA proposals of the six states.

The committee is now in advanced stages to finalize notifications for Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa, sources from the expert committee and MoEFCC said. The expert committee is headed by Sanjay Kumar, former Director General of Forest, MoEFCC. Other members include Prof Raman Sukumar from Indian Institute of Science, RP Singh, Director, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Prakash Gajbhiye, Geological Survey of India, and two ministry scientists.

The expert committee is awaiting final information on Maharashtra’s proposal from its biodiversity board, which, according to officials from the state government, has been provided. The state has the second largest area, about 17,340 square km, which is proposed to be included in ESA. However, Maharashtra has proposed to omit 378 of the 2,515 affected villages.

“This is largely to keep areas free for mining and industrial projects, many of which were proposed before the draft ESAs were notified,” said a source aware of developments.

While Gujarat, Goa and Maharashtra are close to agreement, Kerala and Karnataka continue to negotiate with the Centre over the extent and scope of ESA protection.

Karnataka and Kerala are the states where the expert committee is not close to finalizing the extent of ESAs. The largest extent of ESA, 20,668 sq km, or 36.3 per cent, lies in Karnataka. The state’s cabinet took a decision in 2024 to formally reject the Kasturirangan committee report. But a conversation with the Central government on this issue has continued.

“We have told the state government to propose an alternative course of action. You do not agree with the Kasturirangan committee recommendations, it is fine. But certainly, it cannot be your stand that the areas do not need protection. We are sure that the state government is not against environmental protection, and have therefore asked them to suggest how they want to go about it,” a source said.

Kerala, on the other hand, has sought to notify 8,805 sq km as ESA instead of 9,993.7 proposed in the 2024 draft notification. It has proposed to exclude around 31 villages, predominantly from Idukki district and a few from Wayanad, and the Centre’s expert committee has not agreed to this. “There are sensitive areas in both districts that need ESA protection, and we hope to find a resolution on this issue soon,” the source said.

It is learned that the Goa government has sought to exclude 21 villages, all of them from Sattari taluka, from the list of 108 villages demarcated as ESA. Senior officials from Goa’s Department of Environment and Climate Change told The Indian Express that there is no new request made besides the exclusion of 21 villages.

The Centre’s expert committee, it is learned, was tasked with a key mandate of retaining as much contiguous area as possible across the ESAs, to maintain ecological integrity. Since the 2014 draft notification, all states had carried out their own ground truthing exercises and submitted their own reports on Western Ghats ESA’s. Sources said that one of the key exercises over the past four years has been to reconcile incorrect village data, such as typographical errors, using multiple land record sources to rule out discrepancies, and account for bifurcation of villages.