From God’s Own to Godforsaken country—Kerala heading fast to environmental red line

Thiruvananthapuram: Madhav Dhananjaya Gadgil. The Pune-based ecologist’s is the most-referred name in public discourses in Kerala now. Having battered by back-to-back downpours, floods and landslides, there is a strong feeling that the magnitude of the loss and destruction from natural calamities could have been reduced if the power centres heeded the warning sounded out by the soft-spoken scholar years back.

Gadgil, the hard working academic , writer and activist, headed the Western Ghats Ecology Experts Panel (WGEEP), set up by the Union Ministry of Forest and Environment over a decade back. The panel was mandated to study the serious environmental threat faced by the Western Ghats, the forest- covered mountain range cutting through seven states from Maharashtra down to Tamil Nadu. The biosphere is home to immense variety of flora and fauna, invaluable ethnic knowledge and source of most southern rivers, that are lifelines for the entire southern peninsula. Over the decades, much of the Western Ghats has been rendered extremely fragile due to unrestricted and unregulated human activity. The panel was asked to draw up suggestions to arrest further slide down the environmental Armageddon , triggered by continued assault on the Western Ghats ecosystem.

After painstaking study, during which Gadgil and his colleagues took several arduous treks up the high peaks and deep into the dark forest patches , WGEEP submitted its report on August 31, 2011. Hailed as a foundational text on the Western Ghats conservation, it has since then been known as the Gadgil Report.

The report, despite being its key contents highlighted in media as portentous, has failed to get acted upon. Successive governments, headed by the Congress and the CPI(M), political parties outside the two coalitions, influential community establishments including the Catholic Church had combined in sabotaging its implementation. Enfeebled dissenting voices were lost as a whimper in the ear-dinning clamour of ‘reject the Gandgil report.’ Seeking to deflect the public outcry, the Government then set up another panel under former ISRO Chairman K Kasturirangan to have a critical look at the Gadgil report. This effectively turned out to be an exercise to substantially water down the vital recommendations of the original study.

Much of the opposition to the Gadgil report has sprung from sheer ignorance of its actual content. Many were carried away by the high decibel misinformation campaign unleashed by the vested interests that its implementation will lead to massive displacement of people settled down the slopes of the Western Ghats, most of them small and medium farmers. This is totally unfounded as the Gadgil Committee did not call for massive shifting of the settlers out of their holdings. It had only suggested an immediate halt to environmentally damaging activities like big constructions, quarrying, building of dams and power projects and denudation of whatever little green canopy that had survived the persistent plunder. It had categorised, based on compelling evidence, nearly 64 per cent of the Western Ghats as Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA). The Kasturirangan panel sharply brought down this to 37 per cent.

Tribal communities had flourished in the Western Ghats since ancient times. They had lived in harmony with the nature, either as hunter-gatherers or as subsistence farming clans. The outside invasion of the Western Ghats started during the British colonial days with planters finding the hill tracts a fertile ground to grow tea, coffee and rubber, besides harvesting spices like pepper and cardamom that flourished in abundance. European planters built roads, developed hill stations with trading depots, clubs and low-cost quarters to house the plantation workers brought to the estates mostly from Tamil Nadu. Most of these plantations got transferred to big Indian business houses after the independence. A second wave of outside influx began in early 20th century when economically and socially deprived people from the Central Travancore region started trekking up the hill in search of patches of lands to cultivate and eke out a living. The incursion to hilly areas, a highly risky endeavor that led to death of many, stretching from Wayanad in north Kerala to Idukki and further south of the state continued till mid-2th century. The mass encroachment and largescale deforestation grievously harmed the ecosystem, whose catastrophic fallout now getting out of control.

Gadgil has stoutly denied that the vested interest propaganda that WGEEP report had suggested displacement of farmers from the hill tracts to save the Western Ghats. What it suggested, on the contrary, was that there should be an immediate halt to dangerous exploitation of nature by commercial interests in the name of development with the support of the political class and community establishments. It is unfortunate that no government or political party has shown will to stand up against the greed-driven destruction of nature.

Last year, Kerala was overwhelmed by devastating floods, the worst in a century. Heavy rains in August set the rivers in spate and breaching banks. A string of towns and villages across several districts were inundated within hours. The Government acted quickly, cranking up the rescue machinery with the help of local communities, especially fisherfolk, who saved thousands by plunging into swift action. But the loss of property was huge. The full rehabilitation is still a far cry. It was also alleged that the failure of dam management too was responsible for the calamity.

This year, unlike some other parts of the country like Maharashtra, the monsoon was sluggish over Kerala in June and July. But by the first week of August the situation abruptly changed.m Most parts of the state was pounded by heavy downpour. If it was floods last year, this season the havoc was wreaked by heavy landslides. It was more severe in two highland settlements in Wayanad and Malappuram districts, on the slopes of the Western Ghats. The loss of lives was higher than what it was last year, though the exact official count is yet to be released. Climate change could be blamed for the unseasonal downpour. There is no need, however, to search far to know that landslides are the direct fallout of vandalization of the Western Ghats.

This environmental tragedy is not confined to Kerala alone. Nature transcends man-made boundaries.

Will this be a recurring story ? Can something be done to save the day, though it is already too late. These are the question many are now asking.-N Muraleedharan