Experts: Infra projects cause of disasters in Western Ghats

Aksheev Thakur
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 31
In the wake of the natural disaster in Kerala's Wayanad, questions are also being raised about the environmental catastrophe in Karnataka, which witnessed a massive landslide at Shirur district last week. Experts say that unscientific infrastructure projects in Western Ghats are resulting in natural disasters.

Reports ‘ignored’
Successive governments in Karnataka and Kerala have opposed the implementation of both Madhav Gadgil Committee Report 2011 and Kasturirangan Committee Report 2012 on Western Ghats. Due to this, the Union Environment Ministry could never implement the recommendations of either of the reports

Several government projects like thermal, railway are underway in those areas of Western Ghats which fall in Karnataka. Experts warn that massive encroachments of forests and infrastructure projects in both the states are likely to bring climate catastrophe.
Successive governments in Karnataka and Kerala have opposed the implementation of both Madhav Gadgil Committee Report 2011 and Kasturirangan Committee Report 2012 on Western Ghats. Due to this, the Union Environment Ministry could never implement the recommendations of either of the reports.
The Committees’ had recommended declaring Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA) in the Western Ghats which fall in the two states. In the ESA activities such as quarrying, destruction of natural vegetation were recommended to be banned.
Meppadi, Chooralmala, Attamala, and Noolpuzha villages which bore the brunt of landslide fall in the Ecologically Sensitive Localities (ESL) in Kerala were identified by the Gadgil Committee.
Speaking with The Tribune, Gadgil reiterated that the report prepared by him was scientific.
“Our Western Ghats Panel produced a pro-nature, pro-people report based on sound scientific information and feedback from Central and State Governments, zila parishads, gram panchayats and people. Its recommendations conformed to our Constitution and various acts. Several vested interests engaged in exhausting or polluting the country's natural capital to make a fast buck so it was rejected out of hand,” he said.
Gadgil said once there were quarries operational from the disaster site in Wayanad.
In Koottickal in the Kottayam district of Kerala, 14 people died in a landslide on October 16, 2021. Gadgil said that unabated quarrying in the hill resulted in that.