The Wayanad landslide holds lessons on the governance of fragile zones

livemint.com:

The monsoon has predictably brought with it swollen rivers flooding the countryside and urban flooding on account of blocked stormwater drains. But the crushing landslides in Wayanad at the end of July were out of the ordinary. An extreme burst of rainfall attributable to globally-induced climate change was the cause, but the impact in terms of lives lost and villages erased was a result of weakening of the topography by predatory construction, mining and quarrying.

Way back in August 2011, a Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) chaired by Professor Madhav Gadgil submitted its comprehensive report on the vulnerability of the Western Ghats to encroachment. The WGEEP classified the Western Ghats into three zones by degree of ecological sensitivity, based on criteria set out in a refereed academic paper in the journal Current Science. The severest strictures on permissible economic activity were imposed on ecologically sensitive zone one (ESZ1).

The assignment of area under each zone was by taluk, the next level below the district in the administrative hierarchy. All three taluks of Wayanad district were in ESZ1. It follows from this taluk-wise geographical assignment that the six Western Ghat states (Goa, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu) were each treated separately, as the report explicitly says (page 88).

That being the case, there was no need for all states to agree unanimously to the restrictive measures proposed. States could have been left free to opt in fully, or with modifications subject to negotiation with the Union ministry of environment. A final set of notifications could have set out the agreed parameters specific to each state, along with the monitoring mechanism.