Kerala's green area not reduced

Thiruvananthapuram: Contrary to the state government’s claim, there is no reduction in the extent of ecologically sensitive areas in the state’s stretch of Western Ghats. It will remain 10,554 sq km, as stated in the draft notification issued on March 10, 2014. And the number of villages marked as ESA is 123, and not 119 as the state government had claimed.

This means that the vast and elaborate exercise conducted by village-level committees during the second half of 2015 to further whittle down the area of ESAs in the state has been wasted. The cadastral maps evolved on the basis of that exercise and submitted to the Centre on July 31, 2015, in short, have been dumped.

This was revealed by Union environment minister Prakash Javadekar while responding to a question raised by Idukki MP Joice George in Parl-iament. “The extent of ESA covering a total area of 56,685 sq km, which is spread across six states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the earlier draft notification  dated March 10, 2014, remain unchanged in the fresh Dr-aft Notification dated September 4, 2015,” Mr Javadekar said in his reply.

The 2014 notification had taken out nearly 23 per cent, or 3,247 sq km, from the 13,108 sq km of ESA originally identified in the state by the Kasturirangan panel. These 3,247 sq km, the state argued, were cultural landscapes like human settlements, plantations and agricultural areas which were mistakenly marked as natural landscapes and branded ESA by the Kasturirangan panel. The reworked ESA contours were based on ground-level reports, as opposed to aerial remote-sensing surveys of the Kasturirangan panel.

However, with the high ranges still on the boil, and Kerala Congress (Mani) threatening even a pull out, the Chandy government was forced to set up a second set of village-level committees to further chisel down the once reworked ESA. These panels, while trying to shrink ESA further, had taken out four villages in Kottayam from the ESA ambit.