- A new draft notification defines Ecologically Sensitive Areas across 56,825 sq km of the Western Ghats, restricting mining, industry, and large-scale construction.
- States including Kerala and Goa continue to resist the boundaries over concerns about tourism, farming, and real estate development.
- The process has been unresolved since 2011, and the expert committee’s deadline has now been pushed to 2027.
On July 27, the Union Environment Ministry issued the seventh draft notification delineating the Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA) falling within the Western Ghats. The ESA restricts activity within the Western Ghats to preserve its biodiversity and geological integrity in the face of rising human activity. But even as experts argue the urgent need to finally notify the ESA, states have been unable to reach a consensus about which areas the notification should cover.
The Western Ghats stretch from the Tapti river valley in the Gujarat-Maharashtra border down across 1,500 kilometres south to Kanyakumari, crossing Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu along the way. This region is considered one of the world’s eight “hottest” biodiversity hotspots, hosting more than 7,000 species of flora and fauna. It is also extremely landslide prone, necessitating “special measures of protection and mitigation,” the draft notification says.
But since it was released, representatives from Kerala, Karnataka, and Goa have reportedly expressed apprehensions over the economic consequences of restricting economic activity within the ESA zones. The tenure of the expert committee formed to guide the ESA notification process has been extended to 2027, to help settle these issues and finalise the area.
Why some states are unhappy
The latest ESA draft notification covers 56,825 square kilometres, largely retaining the area of its predecessor. Apart from banning mining, sand mining, quarrying, thermal power plants, and red category industries, the notification restricts the construction of built up areas to 20,000 square metres, and townships to an area of 50 hectares with a built up area of 1,50,000 square metres.
In Goa, where large parcels of land are being converted from agriculture and forest areas to settlements, the ESA has the potential to override state legislation and stop large real estate and industrial projects in applicable regions, said Tahir Noronha, an architect and urban planner. The ESA notification covers 108 villages in Goa. “Misinformation about the nature of restrictions has been spread among villagers. Ministers with vested interests in developing these areas convinced many that they will lose the ability to construct homes for their family,” he said.
“Even though the ESA imposes limits on the size of construction for each project, it may not prevent the piecemeal conversion of small plots of protected areas to settlements. So fragmentation could continue,” he added.
The state government had been in talks with the centre over removing some villages from the ESA in Sattari taluka, an area that is rich in iron deposits. MLA of Poriem and Chairperson of the Goa Forest Development Corporation, Deviya Rane, told the press that “no decision will be allowed to cause injustice to the people of Sattari. The State government and local representatives will strongly present the people’s concerns before the Centre.”
In Kerala, Francis George, a Member of Parliament from the Kerala Congress, called the ESA notification unacceptable because it “failed to accommodate Kerala’s long-standing demand that human habitations, plantations and agricultural lands be completely excluded from the proposed ESA.”
Concerns stem from the impact that restrictions could have on the tourism industry, which is a large source of income for local communities in Wayanad and Idduki, Alex Ozhukayil, Chairman of the Kerala Independent Farmers Association and a vocal critic of the ESA, told Mongabay India. “Even a three star hotel with a 10 bedroom facility can be categorised as a red industry, or a hospital with 500 beds. These restrictions impact the value of our lands, and for farmers, our land is our wealth,” he said, adding, “We understand these are ecologically sensitive areas, but restrictions must be made in consultation with the people.”
A senior official with knowledge of the ESA process, who is not authorised to speak to the media, told Mongabay India that the 9,993.7 square kilometres of ESA notified in Kerala was based on the state’s own proposition. “Public perceptions about the notification have hardened political positions against the ESA in some places, but we’ve seen improvements in others,” the official said, indicating broad acceptance of the ESA notification in Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu.
Though the notification restricts the extent of fresh constructions, there are no restrictions on repair and renovation work of existing buildings, and other activities requiring environmental clearance are permitted on the condition that they meet prevailing regulations. The notification also permits hydropower projects as long as they conduct cumulative environmental impact assessments, and include at least 30% of uninterrupted river flow of the river in the lean season.
A fraught process
The inability to finalise the ESA boundaries has persisted since 2011, when they were first proposed by a committee led by ecologist Madhav Gadgil.
The Gadgil committee report, considered a landmark report advocating the protection of the region, had recommended the entire 1,29,037 square kilometres of the Western Ghats come under the ESA, with different ESA zones signifying different levels of protection.
The Western Ghats’ ecological diversity comes, in part, from its topographical heterogeneity: The hill ranges feature tropical wet evergreen forests, montane stunted evergreen (shola) forests, lateritic plateaus, grasslands, and moist deciduous and dry deciduous forests. It is also the source of three major river systems, the Godavari, Kaveri, and Krishna.
“When the catchment area of rivers is surrounded by natural vegetation, rivers remain perennial. Considering rising water scarcity in the region, preserving this source is critical,” said TV Ramachandra, a former scientist with the Indian Institute of Science who has studied the ecological value of the Western Ghats. “We found that villages in the vicinity of natural forests enjoyed double the yield compared to other landscapes, so there is an economic value to this preservation too.”
The Gadgil report recognised that the ecosensitivity of the Ghats was not uniform, and proposed ESA zones be based on composite scores of ecological significance, determined by species endemicity, conservation status, and geological fragility, among other parameters. It also proposed setting up a Western Ghats Ecology Authority (WGEA) to regulate, manage, and plan activities within the ESA zones. It suggested the WGEA “identify the Gram Panchayats that are covered…and initiate a broad-based participatory process to decide on specific limits” of each zone.
Though the Committee delivered on its mandate, state governments opposed the suggestions it made, namely its proposal to restrict certain types of industrial and infrastructural development in the most significant biodiversity zones.
To assuage these concerns, the Union Environment Ministry then set up a High Level Working Group led by scientist K. Kasturirangan in 2012 to review the Gadgil Committee report as well as the objections raised by state governments.
The Kasturirangan report shifted the ESA’s focus to protecting the remaining natural landscapes in the Western Ghats. It recommended the ESA be limited to 37% of the region’s natural landscape, covering 59,940 sq km, based on geospatial analyses. It also opened the door to permitting hydroelectric power projects in the ESA zone, which the Gadgil Committee had strictly recommended against.
All the ESA notifications issued since then have been based on the areas mentioned in the Kasturirangan report, and continue to be disputed by states.
Conserving the Western Ghats
In 2022, the central government constituted yet another committee, led by former director general of forests Sanjay Kumar, “to re-examine the suggestions of the six State Governments in a holistic manner, keeping in view the conservation aspects of the disaster prone pristine ecosystem, and the rights, privileges, needs and developmental aspirations of the region.”
The significance of finalising the ESA gained prominence when a devastating landslide struck Wayanad, Kerala, in 2024, triggered by heavy rainfall. The sixth ESA draft was re-notified over a month after the previous draft notification had lapsed, and one day after the landslide struck.
According to Ramachandra, the urgency of finalising the ESA lies in the many risks posed by fragmentation and unchecked development in the Western Ghats, including more frequent landslides. His study found that evergreen forest cover over the Ghats had reduced from 16% in 1985 to 11% in 2018, while built up areas increased by 4.5% and agriculture by 9%.
“The consequences of fragmentation on biodiversity include a lower growth rate of species due to resource shortage or dietary diversity, disruption of genetic exchanges amongst wildlife populations, and a significantly high mortality rate,” the study says.
“The decision to allow hydropower projects is unfortunate, because the Western Ghats have already reached their saturation point for them, and additional projects will lead to the submergence of forest land and will have consequences for water availability further downstream,” he said, adding, “Human-animal conflict, vector borne diseases, and the impacts of climate change are all likely to worsen if the Western Ghats are not preserved,” he said.
Banner image: View of the Western Ghats from the Mumbai-Pune expressway. Image by Nagesh Kamath from Bangalore, India via Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 2.0].