Don’t repeat Joshimath

The role of power projects like Tapovan Vishnugad, which struck tragedy in Chamoli district in 2019 and killed over 200 people, has rung alarm bells against reckless exploitation of nature. It was forgotten, and the plundering of nature continued for Char Dham roads and power projects. What followed was land subsidence in Joshimath that put the lives of 25,000 people at stake. One-fourth of the buildings in this troubled town are unsafe for habitation and are being demolished. In the biting cold and sub-zero temperatures, people are being relocated. It is the responsibility of governments to ensure that towns like Joshimath are not allowed to expand when they are sitting on ancient landslide debris.

It is not just Joshimath. Cracks are reported in the houses at Karna-Prayag and Jharauta villages of Chamba district in Himachal Pradesh. Jharuta village lies below a 15 km long and 5.6 km wide tunnel of the 180 MW Bajoli-Holi hydro project. The data from the energy department of Himachal Pradesh show that there are 164 big and small dams, and another 916 are in the pipeline. Are we setting up these projects at the cost of human safety? Scientists have repeatedly warned that hydro projects exacerbate the fragility of already complex and dynamic, seismically active mountains.

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The agreement reached recently at COP 15 in Montreal is to protect 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030. Instead of moving towards the goal, we are moving away from it. Karnataka’s Western Ghats have been subjected to plundering to make way for many projects like road widening, the laying of rail tracks, and power and mining.

The state has been regularly experiencing landslides, flooding, and drought in recent years. We are making no efforts to conserve nature as several big projects like the Hubballi-Ankola rail line and tunnelling through Shiradi Ghat loom large. Mindless tourism has taken its toll on nature too. Our sincerity in conservation is also lacking, and vested interests are preventing the notification of “conservation reserves” in river catchments.

A large part of Chikkamagaluru district has been a thickly forested landscape, providing major catchments for important rivers like the Tunga, Bhadra, and Hemawati, the lifelines for not only the people of Karnataka but also of the adjoining states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu. Hardly 30% of the wooded lands in the district were reserved, and more than 40% of the thickly forested areas were under the control of the revenue department, some of which were granted to individuals for growing coffee, but still bigger chunks have been encroached upon mainly by adjoining coffee growers.
More than 8,000 ha of shola forests and grasslands in Mullyangiri, Baba Budangiri Hills, and Dattatareya Peetha areas have continued to remain under the control of the revenue department. This also includes the 1,200 ha “Inam lands” of Mysore Maharaja’s administration. No attempts have ever been made to reserve these lands and bring them into the fold of the forest department for conservation, knowing quite well that sholas are the source of water supporting perennial streams that merge with the tributaries of important rivers; the dispensation failed to control large-scale encroachments.

Ideally, all such lands should have been reserved a hundred years ago. The resistance from people and politicians makes it difficult to do now.
D V Girish and Shreedev, the activists who have supported conservation since Bhadra Sanctuary came into existence, worked with the authorities in the revenue and forest departments and brought even political figures on board to declare revenue-controlled areas, including “Inam lands,” as “Conservation Reserves.”

The move was supported by officers, and it was resolved by the State Board of Wildlife in 2019 to survey the land and declare the area not included in the Reserved Forests and Bhadra Sanctuary as a “Conservation Reserve.

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Despite six out of eight village panchayats in the landscape expressing no objection in writing, the activists pursuing the proposal were harassed. Revenue department officials surveyed the area and bargained for a reduction on the ground that some area would be needed for the future development of villages. They finalised nearly 6,000 ha for the “Conservation Reserve” proposal. Once the officers were transferred and politicians were not sure they could get any mileage out of it, the proposal was shelved.

Though high-altitude shola forests interspersed with grasslands are unsuitable for coffee cultivation, many shola forest areas have been illegally brought under coffee cultivation. The planters construct buildings for the homestays of the tourists as well. Several such buildings were found to have been constructed inside coffee plantations and some in encroached shola patches, generating sewage and polluting the original source of streams flowing all across the landscape and merging with tributaries and rivers. Is that what we aim for by expanding tourism?
Another ill-effect of tourism is the crowding of vehicles on narrow, hilly, winding roads with several hairpin bends. I also faced traffic jams and remained stranded at several locations during my visit. The district administration has not worked out the maximum carrying capacity of these places. It must evolve a policy to stop all light vehicles at Chikkamagaluru and Lingdhalli, where cars enter hilly roads and move towards Baba Budangiri and Mullayangiri hills, Dattatreya Peetha, and Kemmangundi.

People should be able to travel to and from all of these locations more easily if buses run frequently. A high fee of Rs 10,000 can be levied to those who insist on moving in their cars.
If a doctor, judge, or police officer errs in judgement, the damage will be inflicted on one family or a group of persons, but if forest and revenue officers err in their judgement, they can inflict damage to the entire landscape and ecology, potentially polluting natural sources of water, disrupting ecological services, and increasing the carbon footprint. The tourism policy for such a fragile landscape should be reviewed, the mushrooming of homestays should be checked, and the plundering of nature should stop.

(The writer is a retired principal chief conservator of forests (head of Forest Force), Karnataka.)