Scientist, author, and foremost voice of ecological conscience: Madhav Gadgil proposed a roadmap for Western Ghats conservation

Field research and Centre for Ecological Sciences

Born in 1942 in Pune to Pramila and Dhananjay Ramchandra Gadgil, an eminent economist himself, Madhav Gadgil developed ideas that were key to the eventual Biological Diversity Act. He also served on the Prime Minister’s Scientific Advisory Council from 1986 to 1990.

He was also a member of the National Advisory Council under United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi for two years, an expert advisory body that advised the Congress-led government at the Centre.

His longest academic association was with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, which he joined in 1973 after returning from Harvard University with a doctorate in Biology with a thesis in Mathematical Ecology. He pursued research in both theoretical biology and field ecology, as per the Indian Institute of Science. Before his PhD, Gadgil studied biology at Fergusson College, Mumbai and Zoology at the University of Mumbai.

At IISc, he continued field research on the Western Ghats, with many years of fieldwork. One of his biggest contributions to academia was founding the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES) at IISc in 1982, the first Centre of Excellence in the newly formed Department of Environment of the Indian Government, according to the IISc website. One of the outcomes of his long years of research through CES was the declaration of the Nilgiri forests as a Biosphere Reserve in 1986.

Western Ghats expert panel

Years later, between 2010 and 2011, his vast and intimate experience of the Western Ghats as a person who grew up around the Sahyadri Hills would shape public policy on the fragile mountain range. Gadgil chaired an expert panel on ecology, constituted in 2010 by the then UPA government.

It assessed the status of the Ghats’ ecology and was tasked with demarcating areas within the region that needed to be notified as ecologically sensitive. It also recommended for notification of such areas as ecologically sensitive zones.

The report’s prescriptions, thorough and meticulous, were a shot of fresh blood for the conservation of the Ghats, which had been under increasing threat from infrastructure projects.

Gadgil’s panel recommended that the entire Ghats be declared as ecologically sensitive in graded categories, based on their sensitivity. In brief, it sought 1,27,000 sq km to be marked as ecologically sensitive.

It set off a political firestorm, as the larger states falling in the Western Ghats range – Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala – all opposed the implementation of the report’s recommendation.

Kerala saw the most intense protests, in which communities and politicians expressed fears of losing livelihoods due to prohibitions arising from the report’s recommendations.

Ironically, though Gadgil prescribed a participatory and graded form of ecological protection in the 2011 report, the UPA government withheld it from the public domain. After battling through the information commission and court litigation, the report was finally made public in May 2012 at the Delhi High Court’s direction.

Sidelining of Gadgil report

Once it was made public, the report set off debates and discussions among communities, environmentalists in the Western Ghats, with votaries of the report’s implementation on either side. The Gadgil report was effectively sidelined, and a new panel under scientist K Kasturirangan mapped the Western Ghats to prescribe protections. It is the latter that now forms the basis of a draft government notification seeking to protect roughly 57,000 sq km as ecologically sensitive.

Gadgil was also a prolific academic writer and author. He wrote seven books and 225 scientific papers. Two of his more notable books were This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India (1992) and Ecology and Equity: The Use and Abuse of Nature in Contemporary India (1995), which he co-authored with historian Ramachandra Guha.

Last year, he won the United Nations Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth award for lifetime achievement for his contributions to the environment, conservation and ecology. He was also a Padma Shri awardee in 1981 and a Padma Bhushan awardee in 2013. In addition to national civilian awards, he also won the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and the Volvo Environment Prize.