Residents, environmentalists push back on Karnataka's Western Ghats stance

The controversy over Western Ghats conservation in Karnataka remains unresolved, with environmentalists and a section of residents in the hill districts challenging the assertions of ministers and politicians about the Kasturirangan report.

The Karnataka Legislature had on September 22 passed a unanimous resolution requesting the Centre to restrict the Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) identified in the report to notified forest areas alone. Those opposing that position have described the claims made by political leaders as misleading, and have launched efforts to spread awareness about what the report actually provides.

Copies of the draft ESA notification have been printed in Kannada so that the public can read the document directly, said Akhilesh Chipli, an environmentalist from Sagara taluk. He alleged that the issue had been politicised across party lines for electoral gain, and that the attempt was to shield illegal properties.

Arguing in favour of the ESA, Chipli said more than 80% of the area identified in the report already enjoys some form of protection, but that legal cover is needed for the remainder. He cited the example of Sagara, where a 2,000-acre nuclear power project was proposed a few months ago in Besuru village of Avinahalli hobli. The site has no reserve or protected forest, he said, but it includes the Sharavathi backwaters and therefore falls within the ESA by default, which would bar red-category projects. He added that nearly 4,000 sq km of the Western Ghats in Karnataka lack legal protection and asked whether such areas should not be safeguarded as well.

Col. (Retd.) C.P. Muthanna, coordinator of the Save Kodagu and Cauvery Campaign, said politicians had lost sight of why the report was prepared in the first place. The exercise began with the Gadgil report and was later diluted into the Kasturirangan report, he noted. In his view, the entire Western Ghats stretch from Gujarat to Kerala serves as a catchment for peninsular India and is vital for water security. He argued that there is considerable money to be made from destruction and construction, and that the hills hold mining potential which the ESA seeks to curb. Commercial activity should not be permitted in the catchment area, he said, adding that protecting only part of Kodagu makes little sense since the whole district feeds the Cauvery, and the same logic applies elsewhere. He also rejected as misleading the suggestion that the report would stop people from building houses or drying agricultural produce in their yards.

H.A. Kishor, an environmental activist from Hassan, acknowledged that the Kasturirangan report may not be flawless but said it is desperately needed to protect what is left of the Western Ghats, describing the range as the water tank of South India. In Malnad, he said, human-animal conflict has risen because habitats and corridors are being destroyed in the name of development, including hydel and river diversion projects. While people point to existing legal frameworks, their implementation has failed, and enforcing the report would help curb activities such as mining, he said.

Kishor alleged that the mining and timber mafia were using farmers as a front to oppose such protections. At the same time, he said the worries of genuine farmers are rooted in the fact that many who have cultivated revenue land within the proposed ESA do not hold the required documents, such as hakku patras, and that some also fear a fall in land values in Malnad because of the protections.