The beach at Galathea Bay, the site of the proposed port, is one of the most significant nesting sites in the Indian Ocean of the giant leatherback, the world’s largest sea turtle, in addition to three other species that also nest here. (Express File)
Imagine a large patch of low-lying land on the outskirts of any of our ever-expanding metros. Though registered in government records as a lake, it has been dry for a few years because of poor rains. By a sleight of hand well-known to the Indian public, the land is taken over by a builder, a high-rise is constructed in double quick time and occupants move in with much fanfare. The rains return, land becomes lake and the residents are marooned. The aggrieved home-owners go to court, which in turn asks the government to fix responsibility. The government sets up an enquiry committee which comes back with an ingenious solution: The lake that was a lake till recently was never a lake in the first place. And now that there is a building here how can this be a lake anyway? If migratory birds were visiting, it was their illusion that this was a lake, and the bird sanctuary here had been denotified many years ago anyway.
A farce (or should we call it subterfuge?) much bigger than this has just been played out in the Great Nicobar Island as reported by this newspaper (‘Nicobar port plan: Flagged in no-go zone earlier, now in permitted area’, IE, July 29).
At the heart of the matter are two related aspects: First, a category of land labelled by Indian law as coastal regulation zone (CRZ)-1A and second, the environmental clearance granted by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) to a Rs 42,000 crore transshipment port in Great Nicobar Island’s Galathea Bay. Coastal areas that are notified as protected areas (wildlife sanctuary and national park), with mangroves, corals, turtle-nesting beaches, sea grass beds and nesting grounds of birds among others, are included in CRZ-1A. Significantly, they are out of bounds for large construction projects such as the port in question in Great Nicobar Island.
The beach at Galathea Bay, the site of the proposed port, is one of the most significant nesting sites in the Indian Ocean of the giant leatherback, the world’s largest sea turtle, in addition to three other species that also nest here. The project site also has coral colonies and mangroves as mentioned in the project’s environment impact assessment report and the adjoining coastal forests have important nesting sites of the endemic Nicobar megapode. It was to conserve this richness and diversity that Galathea Bay was proposed in 1997 as a wildlife sanctuary over 11 sq kms of sea, coast and coastal forest. This was clearly CRZ-1A and a port was out of the question here.
But the path was cleared, first and foremost, by denotifying the sanctuary in January 2021 even though the turtles continue nesting here. Put together, the Galathea Bay WLS should never have been de-notified, the MoEFCC’s environment appraisal committee (EAC) should never have recommended the project for clearance and the MoEFCC should never have cleared the project that it did in November 2022. This was then challenged in the National Green Tribunal, which even as it failed its mandate spectacularly, could not help but note that the project site had 20,668 coral colonies and “that part of the project is in CRZ-IA area where Port is prohibited.”
The NGT then appointed a high powered committee (HPC) headed by the Secretary, MoEFCC, with a key member being the Chief Secretary (CS), A&N Islands, to look into the matter. It did not strike the NGT that the CS is the chairman of the board of directors of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation Limited (ANIIDCO), the project proponent whose environmental clearance was under question or that the MoEFCC was the very agency that had granted this clearance. They would be sitting now in judgement on a challenge to their own actions.
The problem however remain unresolved because the project site was still CRZ-1A based on scientific records, in reports of the Andaman and Nicobar Coastal Zone Management Authority and the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) and, indeed, the order of the NGT constituting the HPC. A port still could not be allowed and a solution was still needed. The workaround came via a ground truthing survey the NCSCM is supposed to have conducted recently. Read carefully the following from ANIIDCO’s affidavit in the NGT that was also the basis of the Indian Express report: “The HPC came to the conclusion that in the Report submitted by the NCSCM, it has been determined that construction of port is permissible in CRZ-IB area but not permissible in CRZ-IA. The NCSCM, hence, concluded that no part of the project area is falling under CRZ-1A.”
The turtles still nest here, the mangroves still stand, the megapodes still forage and breed here and 20,688 coral colonies still flourish in the adjoining waters. This is still CRZ-1A, but now that the port has been approved, this cannot be IA. It should never have been 1A in the first place. The cart was unfortunately before the horse all along but this has been corrected now.
The hurtling into a legally-sanitised abyss can continue now with a peaceful law-abiding mind.
(Sekhsaria is the editor/author of five books on the Andaman and Nicobar islands, the most recent being The Great Nicobar Betrayal)
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
First uploaded on: 07-08-2024 at 12:04 IST
