Western Ghat panel submits report

Development activities including thermal power projects, mining and other polluting industries should not be allowed in a 60,000 sq km ecologically sensitive "natural landscape" of Western Ghats, a mountainous range that passes through six states, a Government panel said today.
In its report, the 10-member high-level working group, headed by eminent scientist K Kasturirangan, has not recommended any regulatory mechanism for the remaining 96,000 sq km area of the Western Ghats that is defined as "the cultural landscape" in which there are human settlements, plantations and agriculture.
It, however, suggested "incentivise green growth" in such areas.
The report was submitted to Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarjan today.

The panel was constituted to examine the Western Ghats ecology expert panel report prepared under the leadership of environmentalist Madhav Gadgil.
"... Roughly 37 per cent of the total area defined as the boundary of the Western Ghats is ecologically sensitive. Over this area of some 60,000 sq km, spread over the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the working group has recommended a prohibitory regime on those activities with maximum interventionist and destructive impact on the environment," the panel says in its report.

Moving away from the suggestions of the Gadgil panel, which had recommended a blanket approach consisting of guidelines for sector-wise activities, which would be permitted in the ecologically sensitive zones, the new panel said that environmentally sound development cannot preclude livelihood and economic options for the region.

The answer to the question of how to manage and conserve the Ghats will not lie in removing these economic options, but in providing better incentives to move them towards greener and more sustainable practices, it says.
"The message of the report is very worrying because it is saying to us that 37 per cent of the Western Ghats' total geographic area (1.6 lakh sq km) is all that is left today is what can be defined as the natural landscape, which is biodiversity rich, and therefore we are saying that area has to be protected at all costs," Environmentalist Sunita Narain, who is a member of the panel, told PTI.