Zones of worry: Lives on the boil on forest fringes in Keralam after new ESA notification

It is barely noon, but dark clouds have already gathered over Randattumoonni, a hill hamlet deep inside Melukavu in the eastern high ranges of Kottayam. A cool breeze sweeps across the slopes before rain suddenly comes down in sheets, plunging the settlement into near darkness.

“It used to be even darker here when it rained,” recollects Tashkent Paikada, a settler farmer.

For those like Tashkent, these hills are not an untouched wilderness but a landscape shaped by generations of farming and settlement.

They fear that the proposed Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) notification for Western Ghats villages will uproot them from their lives, which were built by fighting inclement weather and marauding wildlife.

The seventh draft notification, the latest one in the series, issued on July 27, proposes to bring 9,993.7 sq km across 131 villages in Keralam under the ESA regime. Of this, 9,107 sq km is forest and 8,86.7 sq km is non-forest area. The deadline for filing objections was September 25.

Though the draft notification prohibits mining, quarrying and sand mining in the notified areas, there are no restrictions on the repair, extension or renovation of existing residential houses or on changes in ownership.

But in the high ranges, the notification has once again stirred fears about the impact of the classification on land, agriculture and everyday life.

Tashkent remembers the uncertainty that followed the earlier proposals.

“After 2013, people started cutting down trees as they feared they would not be able to use their land later. Farmlands were abandoned, and land prices fell. Apprehensions about the notification have done more damage here than anything else,” he says.

A landscape built by migration

The history of these settlements in the ghats region goes back to several generations.

The erstwhile Travancore administration’s Grow More Food campaign in the early 1940s encouraged migration to the high ranges. Families moved into the hills for farming. Over time, human habitations emerged and transformed large swathes of the mountains into agricultural landscapes.

Joseph Thomas, 85, a farmer from Udayagiri, near Kattappana, in Idukki has spent about six decades farming in the high ranges. His parents migrated from Kottayam to Idukki nearly 80 years ago.

For him, the present debate is not simply about environmental regulation but about the future of communities that have lived here for generations.

“If such regulations are brought in, people will eventually be forced to leave their land,” he fears.

Idukki, where 51 villages figure in the latest draft, has emerged as the epicentre of protests as during the times of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel report. All the grama sabhas passed resolutions urging the Union and the State governments to exclude their villages from the regime.

Melukavu panchayat president Bincy Tomy says the issue has already affected access to loans and land transactions. It has also impacted the marriage prospects of youngsters of the region, she points out.

Anil Sebastian, president of the Rubber Producers’ Society at Edamaruku in Kottayam, questions the ecological rationale for including Melukavu in ESA. The nearest forests, he says, are about 30 km to the north and 50 km to the south.

Church in the forefront

The Idukki Diocese of the Syro-Malabar Church has been at the forefront of the anti-ESA agitation since 2013. The High Range Samrakshana Samithy, under the patronage of the diocese, organised a series of protests across the high ranges. The Church continues to argue that human settlements and agricultural land should be kept outside the ESA.

“Human habitations and farmlands shall be fully excluded. Designating 51 villages as ESAs will disrupt normal life across the district. The Church supports the protests as the issue threatens the survival of the local population,” says Fr. Jins Karakkatt, director of the Idukki Diocese Media Commission.

The present anxiety is rooted in a decade-old debate over how the Western Ghats should be protected.

The concerns extend beyond the Church and its affiliates.

Alex Ozhukayil, chairperson of the Kerala Independent Farmers Association, sees the ESA proposal as creating two categories of residents, those who live in the ESAs and outside.

“The inclusion of a holding in theESA will take the villages out of the jurisdiction of the State Revenue department and place them with the Central regime, and residents will then be forced to seek Central clearance for almost every activity. Eventually, the residents will have to vacate the region,” Alex fears.

The issue also reshaped district politics. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Joyce George, legal adviser to the Samithy and a Left Democratic Front(LDF)-backed Independent, won the Idukki seat, which was long considered a Congress citadel.

From Gadgil to Kasturirangan

The root of the dispute lies in the Madhav Gadgil-led Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel report, which proposed a comprehensive zonation of the ghats based on ecological sensitivity.

In the high ranges, however, the report generated fears that agriculture and development would be restricted and that existing settlements could eventually face displacement.

Later, the Centre appointed a High-Level Working Group (HLWG) led by K. Kasturirangan to review the Gadgil recommendations. The HLWG, according to environmentalists, watered down the restrictions.

The first draft notification, based on the HLWG report and issued on March 10, 2014, proposed 123 revenue villages in Keralam, mainly in Idukki and Wayanad, as ESAs. But protests prevented the final notification from being issued, and six more draft notifications followed without resolving the dispute.

Subsequently, the State government-appointed Oommen V. Oommen committee recommended that inhabited areas, plantations and agricultural lands be excluded from the ESA through physical verification and field surveys. It also proposed re-fixing the ecologically sensitive areas using cadastral maps approved by the Kerala State Biodiversity Board. Those recommendations became the basis of Keralam’s position in subsequent negotiations with the Centre.

The arguments from conservationists are markedly different from those heard in the high range settlements.

N. Badusha, president of the Wayanad Prakruthi Samrakshana Samithy, says some interest groups are stoking unnecessary fears with ulterior motives.

“The apprehensions that there will be restrictions on building houses and digging wells in the ESAs are baseless political propaganda pushed by vested interest groups,” he says.

“We have a host of laws, including the Forest Act and the Wildlife Protection Act, to protect forests. So it is pointless to classify forest areas as ESAs to protect forests,” Badusha adds.

V.S. Vijayan, a member of the Gadgil panel, says the panel was misunderstood in the high ranges.

“The report only recommended a shift to organic farming. It never opposed farming. It opposed the pollution of water resources through chemical pesticides and called for non-polluting industries. There were no restrictions on local infrastructure development,” he says.

Vijayan says the panel’s approach was to give local communities a decisive role in determining how development should proceed in ecologically sensitive landscapes rather than impose a blanket ban on local activity.

Oommen also feels that the latest proposal is far removed from the version feared by high range residents.

“The latest draft notification has excluded farmlands and plantations from the ESAs. What is the interest of the high range communities in opposing the protection of fragile rocky land that is not owned by them?” he wonders.

Govt. seeks smaller ESAs

The State government will reiterate that its ESAs shall be limited to 8,590.69 sq km across 98 villages, excluding human habitations and agricultural areas. It wants the ecologically sensitive areas to be confined to forests and leased forest plantations. The demand also reflects a position taken by successive State governments, cutting across the political divide.

The State further argues that inhabited and cultivated landscapes should not be treated in the same manner as forests and other ecologically fragile areas. For residents, the distinction is critical because their houses, farms and livelihoods are embedded in the same landscape that conservation policy seeks to protect.

Residents and farmers’ organisations fear that an ESA designation could restrict them from using or developing their land. However, conservationists and those involved in framing the proposals argue that the notification is primarily intended to regulate activities that can damage fragile ecosystems.

For conservationists, the central issue is whether human activity in the Western Ghats can continue without weakening ecological safeguards. And that disagreement has been simmering for more than a decade of committees, consultations and draft notifications.

The farmers’ organisations have also linked the ESA debate to the Western Ghats’ UNESCO World Heritage status.

Mathew Varghese, State vice-president of the All India Kisan Sabha, the Communist Party of India’s (CPI) farmers’ wing, has demanded that the Western Ghats be excluded from the UNESCO World Heritage Site status, which demands more stringent conservation efforts.

“However, the UNESCO guidelines also say that if a project disrupts the livelihood or daily life of the local population, that area must be excluded,” he says.

Back in Randattumoonni, the hilly hamlet, the rain has begun to ease. Water rushes down the slopes towards the streams below, eventually joining the Meenachil river.

The same hills are viewed in two different ways: as a fragile ecological system that requires protection, and as a lived landscape of farms, homes and communities built over generations.

For people like Tashkent, the question is not whether the hills need protection. It is whether that ESA regime can accommodate the people who have made the hills their home.