States divided on heritage tag for Western Ghats

When the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco ) conferred World Heritage status on the 1,600-km-long Western Ghats , adding 39 locations along the mountain range to the World Heritage list, the reactions ranged from unbridled joy to loud opposition. The loudest protests came from the Karnataka government, which is reeling under the effects of a mining ban in Bellary, and its political fallout. Other states have cautiously welcomed the certification believing it will be business as usual down on the ground. The Western Ghats stretch across Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Karnataka's negative reaction needs to be seen in the light of its experience with earlier conservation efforts. Take the case of a bridge that was to be built across the Tungabhadra river in Bellary district. Construction of the 226-metre cable-stayed bridge, which was to link Hampi, seat of the Vijayanagara kingdom, with Anegundi, the kingdom's first capital, started in 1997. However, a visit by Unesco official Junko Taniguchi in 1999 saw construction halted after 80 per cent of the work was done. Sensing the bridge would result in heavy traffic movement to Hampi, a Unesco world heritage site, Taniguchi sought to have Hampi put on the endangered list. After negotiations between the UN body and the State, work restarted in December 2008, nearly a decade later. However, the bridge collapsed in January 2009.

The fate of the bridge probably haunts Karnataka minister for forests C.P. Yogeshwar when he speaks about the Western Ghats' Unesco tag. "As it is, we have difficulties to take up development works like roads or erecting power lines in the region because of a plethora of forest and environment laws. The Unesco recognition will make matters even worse and the condition of the people living there miserable," he told Business Today.

But environmentalist R. Sreedhar, Chairman of Mines, Minerals and People, says that governments often ignore UN tags to allow power projects. He cites the clearance given to the Alakananda-Badrinath Hydro electric project in the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve in Uttarakhand.

There are two factors behind the opposition to the heritage tag. The first is that the process of getting the tag was led by the Central Ministry of Environment and Forests without much involvement from the states. The second is a 2011 report by the Western Ghats Ecological Panel, which formed the basis of the Unesco recognition. The report calls for limiting and strictly regulating industrialisation and development across the 174,700-sq km stretch of ghats. It goes so far as to recommend closing down two hydro-electric projects. If the recommendations are implemented strictly, development activity may come to a standstill in areas around the 39 heritage locations. The report has not been accepted either by the Western Ghats states or the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

Maharashtra, which has only four Western Ghat heritage spots, is not too worried about the heritage label and instead expects it to result in a deluge of tourists. In the Kas Plateau in Satara district, it is talking of restricting them to 2,000 a day. Kerala, too, hopes to gain from tourism. Together, Kerala and Tamil Nadu have 20 sites on the Unesco list.
 
However, Maharashtra might still need to worry about its mining hubs in Sawantwadi and Dodamarg in Sindhudurg district, which are close to the Radhanagari Wild Life Sanctuary. Valsa Nair Singh, Maharashtra's Minister for Environment, isn't perturbed, though. "The world heritage tag does not mean any change in policy because those four sites are already protected areas. There is no industry there," she told BT. "The only thing is there will be restrictions on certain activities such as mining in the buffer zone around these sites. We haven't got the notification yet."

The Konkan range, starting in Maharashtra and extending into Goa, has 49 mining leases and 19 power plants. Oddly, the four sites Goa put up for inscription did not make the cut. This has raised many eyebrows. Manguirish Raikar, President of the Goa Chamber of Commerce & Industry, says a balance between ecology and industry is important. "We would have loved the heritage tag in Goa. Industry should be ecologically sustainable." Raikar opposes demands for a ban on iron ore mining in Goa as it sustains thousands of families.

On its part, the Karnataka government is trying to figure out ways to avoid the heritage tag. The Hampi bridge collapse is not the only experience it has had to face. Central public sector unit Kudremukh Iron Ore Company Ltd was ordered to stop iron ore mining inside the Kudremukh National Park in 2002. This park is now one of the 10 UNESCO heritage sites in the Western Ghats located in Karnataka. On July 2 this year, the district civil court of Chikmagalur banned mining in Kemmanngundi, adjacent to the Bhadra Tiger Reserve. The state government wants to leave Kudremukh and Bhadra, which have contiguous forests, out of Project Tiger.

Debashis Chatterjee, Director of IIM Kozhikode, situated at the foothills of the Western Ghats in Kerala, believes the issue of taking the local people along - ensuring ecology doesn't come in the way of livelihoods - has not be handled well. "Imagine a situation where children living in that place do not get basic necessities like schools and transportation as a consequence of the place being a heritage site," he says. "The initiative to declare a place a heritage site or otherwise should come from the community living there, and not from some remote location."