**"Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel - Part I - 14. Western Ghats Ecology Authority

Opinion
    03/10/2018
               1441.
Sub :-

**"Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel - Part I - 14. Western Ghats Ecology Authority

14. Western Ghats Ecology Authority :-

The Western Ghats Ecology Authority (WGEA) should be a statutory authority appointed by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, enjoying powers under Section 3 of the Environment (Protection) Act 1986. Of course, the Western Ghats is an extensive region spanning over six states, 44 districts, and 142 talukas, so the WGEA would need to function in a networked fashion with six constituent State Western Ghats Ecology Authorities, appointed jointly by the State Governments and the Central Ministry of Environment and Forests. The State Western Ghats Ecology Authorities should interact closely with the State Biodiversity Boards and Pollution Control Boards, as well as State Planning Departments administering the Western Ghats Development Programmes funded through Five Year Plans by the Planning Commission. It would be appropriate that all the Western Ghats Development Plan schemes are worked out by the State Governments with the help of the State Western Ghats Ecology Authorities and used to support sustainable development oriented schemes developed under the guidance of the Western Ghats Ecology Authority.

Currently, the Ecologically Sensitive Areas are administered with the help of High Level Monitoring Committees appointed by the Central Ministry of Environment and Forests. These are hampered by lack of regulatory powers, except in the case of the Dahanu Taluka Ecology Authority established through a judgment of the Supreme Court. They are also hampered by lack of financial and human resources. In some cases, no HLMC has been in place for several years at a stretch. WGEEP proposes that they should be replaced by District Ecology Committees in all Western Ghats districts. These District Ecology Committees should work in collaboration with the district level Zilla Parishad/ Zilla Panchayat Biodiversity Management Committees, as well as District Planning Committees. Indeed, it may be appropriate that the district level Biodiversity Management Committees, which are statutory bodies established under the Biological Diversity Act and not ad-hoc committees which may cease to function for years at a stretch as has happened with HLMCs, may be asked to discharge the functions of WGEA District Ecology Committees by augmenting their membership by some experts appointed by the Central Ministry of Environment and Forests and State Western Ghats Ecology Authorities.

WGEA should focus on promoting transparency, openness and participation in every way. An excellent tool for this could be the revival of the scheme of Paryavaran Vahinis, or committees of concerned citizens to serve as environmental watchdogs and undertake first hand monitoring of the environmental situation in the district as required. These Paryavaran Vahini volunteers could play a significant role in building capacity of people at the grass-root level for conservation, sustainable development and ecorestoration. WGEA could also undertake to appoint Environmental Ombudsmen in all districts. It should vigorously promote the institution of a social audit process for all environmental issues on the model of that for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Andhra Pradesh.

WGEEP has made excellent progress in the development of a spatial database, for over 2200 grids of 5’x5’ or roughly 9 km x 9 km through compilation of all readily available information on topography, land cover and occurrence of biodiversity elements for the Western Ghats. WGEA should vigorously pursue further development of this database by bringing on board many available databases such as that prepared in connection with Zonal Atlases for Siting of Industries (ZASI), by sponsoring further scientific inputs, as also by linking Environmental Education activities at school and college levels and the People’s Biodiversity Register exercises to augment the database. WGEA should encourage citizen involvement in continual development of the Western Ghats database on the pattern of the Australian River Watch schemes. In this context, WGEA should help overcome the entirely unjustifiable difficulties that researchers encounter today in working in forest areas. WGEA should pursue concerned Government agencies to make available all pertinent information pro-actively as provided in the Right to Information Act, and not wait for applications by citizens. For example, the Ministry of Environment and Forests should immediately make public all district level Zonal Atlases for Siting of Industries in a searchable form on the Ministry’s website, which may then be linked to the Western Ghats database.

WGEA should lead a radical reform of the Environmental Impact Analysis and Clearance process. It should revisit the list of projects that require Environmental Impact Analysis and Clearance and include certain items such as Wind Mills and small scale hydroelectric projects that are excluded today, and seek ways to carry out the EIAs in a transparent
fashion. Furthermore, it should link Environmental Education activities at school and college levels and the People’s Biodiversity Register exercises to the EIA process. Equally urgent is the need to promote a more holistic perspective and organize a process of Cumulative Impact Analysis in place of the current project-by-project clearances.

WGEA should strive to promote a participatory, bottom-up approach to conservation, sustainable development and ecorestoration of the Western Ghats. With this in view, it should encourage devolution of democratic processes as visualized in the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Indian Constitution. Kerala, one of the Western Ghats states has made substantial progress in this direction, and WGEA should promote the emulation of Kerala example in all the Western Ghats districts. Kerala has also taken the lead in meaningful implementation of the Biological Diversity Act through Biodiversity Management Committees, and WGEA should take immediate steps to ensure establishment of Biodiversity Management Committees at all levels, namely, Gram Panchayats, Taluka Panchayats, Zilla Panchayats, as also Nagarpalikas and Mahanagarpalikas in all the Western Ghats districts. Furthermore, WGEA should ensure that BMCs are motivated through empowerment to levy 'collection charges' as provided in the Biological Diversity Act. These institutions may be involved in developing programmes on the model of ‘Conservation of biodiversity rich areas of Udumbanchola taluka’ in Kerala. These Biodiversity Management Committees are expected to take care of agro-biodiversity as well, and in this context the provisions of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act 2001 are highly relevant. A National Gene Fund has been established under PPVFRA and has substantial amounts available. These funds can be utilized to build capacity at the Panchayat level for in situ conservation of genetic diversity of indigenous crop varieties.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has much potential for the task of ecorestoration. It also has the advantage that Gram Sabhas are expected to be involved in planning of the works to be undertaken. Other opportunities exist for capacity building and empowerment of Gram Sabhas through Extension of Panchayat Raj to the Scheduled Areas Act (PESA) and the Forest Rights Act, and WGEA should promote pro-active and sympathetic implementation of PESA and of the provision of Community Forest Resources under the Forest Rights Act.

Finally, WGEA should strive to make a transition from regulations and negative incentives to promote nature conservation-oriented activities to a system of use of positive incentives to encourage continued conservation-oriented action in the context of traditional practices such as sacred groves and to initiate other action in modern contexts. An example of the latter is the payment of conservation service charges by the Kerala Biodiversity Board to a farmer who has maintained mangrove growth on his private land. WGEA should undertake a critical assessment of the efficacy of funds being deployed towards conservation efforts today in the form of salaries and perks of bureaucrats and technocrats, including their jeeps and buildings to house them. It would undoubtedly be found to be exceedingly low. These funds should then be redeployed over a period of time to provide positive incentives to local communities to maintain biodiversity elements of high value to conservation.



Technical inputs would be required to decide on a common system of assigning conservation value to specific elements of biodiversity and to organize a reliable, transparent system of monitoring biodiversity levels within the territories assigned to various local communities, in the form of either Community Forest Resources assigned under FRA, or Panchayat areas assigned to Biodiversity Management Committees. Educational institutions at all levels, from village primary schools to universities, could play an important role in this effort. Indeed, these exercises could become very valuable components of environmental education curricula. In the long run, only a very lean bureaucratic apparatus should be retained to play a coordinating, facilitative role and to ensure that local communities can effectively enforce a desired system of protection and management of the natural resource base. Such a system would create a very efficient market for conservation performance so that funds earmarked to promote biodiversity would flow to localities and local communities endowed with capabilities of conserving high levels of biodiversity. This system would also channel rewards for conservation action to relatively poorer communities living close to the earth, thereby serving the ends of social justice, and creating in the long range a situation far more favourable to the maintenance of biodiversity on the earth.

NEXT : 14.1 The Legal Framework : Mandate of the WGEA -

To be continued ..