Madhav Gadgil and K Kasturirangan are both scientists of great repute. But both are caught up in a controversy on how the Western Ghats - the vast biological treasure trove spread over the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu - should be protected. First the ministry of environment and forests asked Mr Gadgil to submit a plan for protection of the Ghats. When this was done in mid-2011, the ministry sat on the document for months, refusing to release it even for public discussion. Finally, the court directed the government to take action on the recommendations. The Kasturirangan committee was set up to advise on the next steps.
In April 2013, the Kasturirangan committee (of which I was a member) submitted its report, evoking angry reactions. Ecologists say it is a dilution of the Gadgil report and, therefore, unacceptable. Political leaders and mining companies have combined to fight against the report. A virulent political agitation, led by the church and communist party leaders, was launched in Kerala.
The debate on the two reports has been personal, messy and uninformed. Instead, we need to understand the differences and deliberate what has been done and why. As I see it, there are three key differences between the Gadgil report and the Kasturirangan report. The first one is about the extent of the area that should be awarded protection as an eco-sensitive zone (ESZ). The Gadgil panel identified the entire Ghats as an ESZ. But it created three categories of protection regimes and listed activities that would be allowed in each based on the level of ecological richness and land use.
The Kasturirangan panel decided to use a different method. It removed cash crop plantations such as rubber, agricultural fields and settlements from the ESZ. It could do so because it had the advantage of using a finer remote-sensing technology, unlike the Gadgil panel. It also made the distinction between what it called cultural landscape and natural landscape. The purpose was to remove already modified areas under private control from the protection regime, since governing these areas through permit and fiat systems would lead to unnecessary conflict.
In this way, the Kasturirangan report's ESZ is 37 per cent of the Western Ghats - still a massive 60,000 hectares but much less than the 137,000 hectares proposed by the Gadgil committee. What should concern us is that so little of the region's natural area remains today. The question is how this area should be conserved and grow further.
The second difference is about the list of activities permissible in the protected regime. The Gadgil committee's recommendations on this issue are comprehensive, from banning pesticide use and genetically modified crops in agricultural areas to decommissioning hydropower projects and gradual shift from plantations to natural forests. It is perhaps exactly the right formula for this region, declared a natural heritage of humankind by Unesco.
The Kasturirangan panel did not go by this list. It had already removed substantial areas of humanly modified lands from protection. It then decided to impose restrictions on what it called highly interventionist and environmentally damaging activities in the ESZ. All mining (including quarrying), red-category industry (including thermal power), and buildings over 20,000 square metres would be completely banned. In the case of hydropower projects, the panel set tough conditions to ensure adequate flow in rivers and distance between projects. Our reasoning was that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to regulate and take decisions on such complex and conflicted issues across the 60,000 hectares.
The third difference concerns the governance framework. The Gadgil panel had recommended a national-level authority, with counterparts at the state and district levels. The Kasturirangan panel argued for strengthening the existing framework of environmental clearances and setting up of a state-of-the-art monitoring agency.
But beyond the two reports, there are more serious questions that need to be raised for future policy. I have serious misgivings about the capacity and ability of governance systems (new or old) to regulate protection through permit and prohibition.
The Gadgil report summarises the poignant case of a strawberry farmer and rose cultivator in Mahabaleshwar, notified as ESZ. The farmer was not even allowed to construct temporary sheds or cowsheds, whereas large construction came up illegally. Similarly, in the ESZ in the vicinity of a sanctuary, poor tribals were stopped from using kerosene lamps for lighting - it was argued that this was not permitted (artificial lights that disturb wild animals are listed as a prohibited activity). Will such a regime based on rigid bureaucratic controls and combined with weak institutions of governance not be easily subverted and work against the interests of the poor and the environment?
That is why we need different ways of governance in the coming years. The Western Ghats are inhabited even in the areas categorised as natural landscapes. It is not possible to plan for the Western Ghats only as a fenced-in zone wilderness zone. This is the difference between the natural landscapes of a densely populated country like India and the wilderness zones of many other countries.
The big question is: how can policy incentivise, indeed promote, development that is sustainable in the cultural and natural landscape area of the Ghats and elsewhere? Until we answer this question, we will have smaller and smaller areas to conserve.
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