Kerala floods: Jairam Ramesh flays non implementation of Gadgil panel report
2 min read
By PTI
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Senior Congress chief Jairam Ramesh on Sunday blamed the non implementation of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel report authored by eminent ecologist Madhav Gadgil in 2011, as the main motive for frequent occurrences of devastating floods and landslides in hilly areas of Kerala.
“Whenever there is a natural disaster in Kerala, the Madhav Gadgil’s Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel report of 2011 is recalled. A decade later it remains unimplemented despite devastating floods in 2018 and 2020”, Ramesh wrote on Twitter, a day after flash floods and landslides wreaked havoc killing individuals and damaging properties in hilly areas of Kerala’s Kottayam and Idukki districts.
The former Union Environment Minister informed PTI that the report has persevering with relevance for the whole Western Ghats extending over six states however sadly it has been mothballed whereas ecological destruction continues unabated.
His assertion comes as many social media customers raised the necessity of implementing Gadgil committee report in defending the ecology of Western Ghats, one of many world’s largest biodiversity hotspots, within the gentle of latest floods.
The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, often known as Gadgil Commission headed by ecologist Madhav Gadgil, was an environmental analysis fee appointed in 2010 by Ramesh, when he was union setting minister within the Manamohan Singh-led UPA authorities.
The fee submitted its report back to the federal government on August 31, 2011 during which it had really helpful 64 per cent of the Western Ghats space be declared as an ecologically delicate space.
However, later in 2012, the ministry fashioned a working group on Western Ghats underneath Indian area scientist Okay Kasturirangan to look at the Gadgil Committee report.
He mentioned the Kasturirangan report drastically diminished the world to be shielded from 64 per cent to 37 per cent and likewise denied any function to democratically elected native our bodies in defending the hills.
