KOCHI: Ecologist Madhav Gadgil, who headed the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), which designated the entire hill range as an Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA), said he was not sure how the direction of the National Green Tribunal, to finalise the notification of ESAs in the Western Ghats in six months, will help in conserving the forests and natural resources.
“I have serious issues with the Kasturi Rangan Committee recommendations and the NGT order is talking only about his recommendations,” he told Express.Gadgil said the recommendations of Kasturi Rangan were unconstitutional. His report says the local community cannot have any say in the decision-making process for economic process. As per the findings, a stone quarry is an economic project and the local people or the panchayat will have no right to oppose it.
The Kasturi Rangan Committee speaks only about the forest, but the Gadgil committee speaks about the natural resources, he said. “What my team did was entirely transparent and open. Kasturi Rangan knows me for 30 years and when he started working on the ESAs, I thought he will contact me as it is the common scientific courtesy. His task was to take the work further. When I contacted him, Kasturi Rangan said certain things in his database were superior to our findings. However, he did not place the recommendations in the public domain,” said Gadgil.