Lapse on Kasturirangan to hurt villages

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: By the end of August, when the Centre notifies the ecologically sensitive areas (ESAs) estimated by the high level working group headed by space scientist K. Kasturiangan, the human habitations and cultivated lands the state had attempted to save could be subsumed in the ESA.

The failure of the state to provide specific boundary description or survey numbers could nullify a meticulous panchayat-level filtering exercise carried out last year to keep out habitations and agricultural lands out of  the 123 villages marked as ecologically sensitive (ESA) by the Kasturirangan panel.

The detailed exercise had taken out 3,247 sq km from the 13,801 sq km of ESA originally estimated by the HLWG.

However, despite the repeated requests of the ministry of environment and forests since June 2014, the state has not provided the survey numbers for the revised ESAs.

The MoEFs can verify the ESA villages only after getting survey numbers of the revised areas. This was easy when an entire village was marked ESA.

But now that certain areas within these villages have been dividied into ESA and non-ESA areas and further sub-divided into agricultural land, built-up land including towns and houses, forest, wastelands and waterbodies, demarcation of ESAs has become complicated. “If they don’t receive the information, the MoEF will go ahead and notify the entire 123 vilalges as ESA,” Idukki MP Joice George said.

Truth is, a re-survey of lands has not been done. As of now, there are swathes of thousand-odd acres in the high ranges bracketed under a single survey number.

“As a consequence, forests and cultivated land fall under s single survey number,” said Joice George. He said that the villages of Idukki and Kanjikkuzhi had a single survey number. Fforest minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan conceded the situation.

“But such cases are very rare. The issue will be easily resolved,” the minister said. However, it has been more than a year since the MoEF had begun seeking the additional details.

To assign new survey numbers would require a re-survey. “But this will take at least two years,” said Oommen V Ooomen, the chairman of the Biodiversity Board that had done the mapping of the 123 villages.