The wages of ignoring Western Ghats’ frailty
The higher probability of extreme weather events — rainfall of a quantum seen once in a century is now seen twice in a decade — means higher likelihood of landslides in regions already ravaged by development, planned and unplanned, legal and illegal
Another year. Another monsoon characterised by extremes. And another landslide in Wayanad. It’s a familiar script — but repetition and familiarity do not make the tragedy any less in scale. For years, it has been clear that the Western Ghats were prone to such disasters. In 2011, the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, which was constituted by the Union government and chaired by ecologist and academic Madhav Gadgil, recommended that 75% of the 129,037 sq. km of the Western Ghats — spanning Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa and Kerala — be declared an environmentally sensitive area because of its dense, rich forests and large number of endemic flora and fauna. The panel’s recommendations were not implemented. Instead, each of the states seem to have engaged in a familiar but worrying race for development that often revolved around large construction projects. These projects required cutting into mountains, adding to the existing problem of illegal quarrying that is rampant in many parts of the Western Ghats (including in Kerala).
The climate crisis has only made things worse. The higher probability of extreme weather events — rainfall of a quantum seen once in a century is now seen twice in a decade — means higher likelihood of landslides in regions already ravaged by development, planned and unplanned, legal and illegal. Even as they improve their abilities to respond, governments should rethink their existing development paradigm in ecologically-sensitive zones. The Gadgil committee’s report was not implemented because its recommendations were considered too extreme. Given what has happened in the 13 years since, governments may now end up having to do more to prevent a repeat of the Wayanad landslide.