IN THE NAME OF DEVELOPMENT
Instances of the NDA government clearing projects despite environmental and wildlife conservation concerns
1
The proposed GaduliSantalpur road in Gujarat’s Rann of Kutch will run very close to Flamingo City, the only nesting place for flamingos in the country
Cleared in August 2014
2
A strategic road through the heart of Dudhwa National Park in Uttar Pradesh, citing security reasons
Cleared in August 2014 3 The 3,000 MW Dibang dam project in Arunachal Pradesh will submerge 4,500 hectares of
rainforests, endanger the red panda, clouded leopard and tigers and affect two wildlife sanctuaries
Cleared in September 2014
4
Extension of the Sevoke-Rangpo railway track through Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary in
West Bengal. Over 40 elephants have been mowed down by trains here in the past 12 years Cleared in March 2015 5 Widening of 9 km of a road through the Pench Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh will endanger the tiger corridor between Pench and Kanha tiger reserves, isolating the population of the two habitats
Cleared in August 2015
6
Move to push through
the Kutku Mandal dam on North Koel river in Jharkhand. It will submerge 119 sq km of forest in the Palamau Tiger Reserve—home to tigers, elephants and gaurs
Cleared in August 2015
10
Turning a forest road through the core tiger habitat of Jim Corbett National Park into a national highway. The tiger density in this habitat is among the highest in the world
Cleared in March 2017 9 Upgrade of railway line (Akola-Khandwa gauge conversion) through Melghat Tiger Reserve in
Maharashtra. Over 38 km of the railway tracks pass through a wildlife-rich area inside the reserve
Cleared in January 2017
8
The minimum limit
for Environmental Impact Assessment of construction projects raised from 20,000 sq m to 150,000 sq m through a notification Cleared in December 2016
7
The Ken-Betwa river-linking project will submerge 89 sq km of forests in the Panna National Park, 58 km of which is core tiger habitat
Cleared in August 2016 sanctuaries and critical corridors linking wildlife reserves.
Also, the attempt to provide ‘ease of doing business’ by tweaking environmental laws and making the process of clearances less cumbersome has infuriated environmentalists and wildlife experts, who rue the loss of key habitats— some home to endangered species. “It’s disturbing to see the last tracts of land being destroyed by these project clearances,” says Anish Andheria, president, Wildlife Conservation Trust. “While the government is trying to maintain its GDP, it’s having a cascading effect. I don’t think the government is anti-environment, but development is part of its agenda— this should not be happening at the cost of our ecosystem as these linear intrusions impact biodiversity. What they need to understand is that you cannot liquidate natural resources as you cannot go back in time and make up for these losses.”
There are nearly a dozen instances of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government giving, or considering, the go-ahead to big development projects despite the immense risk they pose to the environment and wildlife. Some of these projects were vetted and rejected by the
environment ministry under UPA rule or cleared after putting mitigation measures in place.
The Pench Tiger Reserve, spread over Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, is a crucial corridor in central India for the movement of tigers between the Pench and Kanha reserves. Understandably, the project to widen National Highway 7, which passes through the Pench reserve, into four lanes has become a bone of contention. Work on the project is in full swing after the National Highways Authority of India approached the standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBW) in August 2015 and secured the nod for widening 9 km of road, between Khawasa and Rookhad in Madhya Pradesh.
That’s not all. New roads have been cleared through the Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand and Dudhwa National Park in Uttar Pradesh. In Gujarat’s Rann of Kutch, the proposed Gaduli-Santalpur road will pass by Flamingo City, the only breeding ground for flamingos in the country, endangering the region’s ecosystem and the bird’s nesting ground. The project had been shot down during the last term of the UPA government. But the project got sanction in August 2014, inviting brickbats from environmentalists and bird lovers.
Reconstituted by the NDA government, the NBW, in a meeting in August 2015, gave the go-ahead to more than 130 projects. A project courting controversy in Jharkhand is the construction of the 68-metre-high Kutku Mandal dam on the North Koel river. The project, cleared in August 2015, is expected to irrigate thousands of hectares of farmland in Bihar and Jharkhand and generate hydropower. The flipside is the impact on the Palamau Tiger Reserve. Over 119 sq km of forests in the reserve are likely to be submerged, destroying not only tiger but elephant and gaur habitat as well. Palamau is a critical habitat. According to the 2014 tiger census, the big cat population in the reserve has fallen drastically, to three. Despite vociferous opposition, the government is going ahead with the project.
In September 2014, the 3,000 MW Dibang hydroelectric project in Arunachal Pradesh was cleared by the environment ministry despite fears of the grave ecological impact of submerging an estimated 4,500 hectares of forest land. The forests are home to the tiger and red panda. Since the project is located very close to the Mehao Wildlife Sanctuary, species such as the clouded leopard and Himalayan black bear could also face a threat. The Dibru-Saikhowa National Park in neighbouring Assam will also suffer ecological damage. The project was shot down twice before the NDA came to power.
A dam cleared in August 2016 inside the Panna National Park in Madhya Pradesh, as part of the Ken-Betwa riverlinking project, will submerge over 89 sq km of forests in the core tiger habitation. “Successive governments have shown no seriousness about environmental governance,
but this (NDA) government is possibly making things worse on some fronts,” says Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People. He adds. “The most illustrative case is the Ken-Betwa river-linking, where clearances have been granted by manipulation. Earlier this year, the late Union environment minister (Anil Madhav Dave) met the chairmen and members of expert committees and the Forest Advisory Committee and said projects should be fastracked as ease of business is priority. Regulators are rubber stamps and agents of business.”
The government’s all-out push for development is coming at the cost of environment and wildlife regulations as well. Some provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, and the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, are being diluted. The laws were enacted at the behest of former prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi after involving wildlife experts such as M.K. Ranjitsinh in their drafting. For instance, the present government passed a notification in December 2016, exempting building and construction projects under 150,000 sq m size from Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)—a safeguard under the Environment (Protection) Act. Earlier, only projects up to 20,000 sq m were exempted from EIA.
The Environment (Protection) Act mandates EIA of construction projects. The assessment includes study of factors such as pollution load, transport load, sewage load and source of availability of sand for a project. The move to relax the law was seen as very damaging in the backdrop of the international climate change debate around construction activity being one of the major contributors to global warming.
According to environment lawyer Ritwik Datta, over a dozen developmental projects inside national parks and wildlife sanctuaries were cleared at a stroke in the meeting of NBW’s standing committee on May 15 this year. It included pipeline, telecommunication and irrigation projects, and even a railway retiring room in one case.
It is noteworthy that one of the first things the government did after coming to power was to reconstitute the NBW, keeping out several board members appointed during the UPA rule, such as Ranjitsinh, Divya Bhanu Singh, ornithologist Asad Rahmani, naturalist Praveen Bhargav and conservationist Prerna Singh Bindra. The terms of most of the members had expired in September 2013. New regulators were appointed on various clearance panels. Among them were two former Gujarat forest officers H.S. Singh and Bharat Pathak and Prof. R. Sukumar, an expert on elephants. The three are on the standing committee of NBW.
Both Ranjitsinh and Divya Bhanu Singh are disturbed about the impact the flurry of project clearances will have on the environment. As a younger officer in the Union government in 1971, Ranjitsinh had played a key role in convincing Indira Gandhi to enact the Wildlife Protection Act. With her backing, he drafted the provisions of the Act against severe opposition from the pro-development lobby. “When India is emerging as a leader in the climate change debate following the US’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, the country needs to be firm about following environment policies that are tough and boost its international stance. But what is happening is quite the reverse,” says Ranjitsinh. Even national parks are no longer safe from the advancing footprints of development, he says despairingly.
“We are not opposed to development,” says Divya Bhanu Singh, “but in the light of the climate change debate, development needs to be environment-friendly. The position of the government is environmentally damaging.”
india today tried to contact director general of forests Siddhanta Das and inspector general of forests (wildlife) Soumitra Dasgupta, under the Union environment ministry, for a comment, but both did not respond. For Bindra, whose book The Vanishing: India’s Wildlife Crisis chronicles how the development-at-any-cost school of policymaking is leading to an ‘ecocide’ threatening environmental and economic security, it’s time for a pause and rethink before the effects on the environment become irreversible. “Tiger reserves in India need to have corridors connecting the reserves to ensure the survival of the big cat,” she says. “Bisecting the corridors with developmental projects, when the goal should be to thicken the corridors with greater protection, will be disastrous in the long run.”
Clearly, the government has its agenda set, but this development paradigm comes with dangerous repercussions. Experts worry that by the time the government wakes up and assesses the damage, the effects on our environment are likely to be permanent. n