Kerala Floods: A disaster triggered by nature; caused by humans

The deluge that has embattled Kerala and thrown daily life into mayhem doesn't know of any precedents in atleast the last hundred years. The scathing disaster has been met with an equally emphatic response: both from the state authorities and the people of India. We have seen exemplary compassion pouring in from every province in India. Yet, there lingers the fundamental question: Could the disaster have been averted? The turn of events in this scenario broadly highlights that though this was a disaster triggered by nature, it was caused by man. We have empirical data which suggests that it wasn't the heavy downpour alone, but it's deadly communion with man made factors like rampant construction, mining and hydroelectric power projects, that culminated into the worst disaster to hit Kerala in a century. Worst ever in terms of economic and psychological damage done. To corroborate this accusation, we must look back - not just months, but years - to 2010, when the call to save the western ghats had gained a lot of steam - environmentalists and the indigenous populace alike, were hopeful that concrete steps to preserve the ecology of western ghats would be taken. In response to the hue and cry, helmed by Save the Western Ghats Group, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change hastily set up the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) under Madhav Gadgil, which submitted it's report the following year. The trenchant recommendations proved to be too hard for the state Govts. to digest. Some of the key suggestions by the Madhav Gadgil Committee were:

1. Designating the entire Western Ghats areas as an Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) - The committee report classified the 142 Taluks within the Western Ghats boundary (which was again, defined by the committee for management purposes) into Ecologically Sensitive Zones - I, II and III, ESZ - I being of highest priority, restricting almost all developmental activities.

2. New Dams based on large scale storage be prohibited in ESZ - I. Since both Athirapilly (Kerala) and Gundia (Karnataka) Hydroelectric Plants fell in ESZ - 1, they called upon the Environment Ministry to stall their environment clearance.

3. Constitution of a Western Ghats Ecology Authority (WGEA) - as a statutory authority under the Environment Ministry, and went so far as recommending that the present system of environmental governance be jettisoned in favour of a reverse bottom-to-top approach, starting right from the Gram Sabhas. The committee risked transgressing its mandate to prescribe this key suggestion.

4. Some other critical recommendations of the committee were: Absolute ban on cultivation of GM crops in the entire Western Ghats area, phasing out of plastic bags in three years, disallowing designation of new Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and Hill Stations, blanket ban on conversion of public lands into private lands and halting the issuance of new licenses for mining, polluting industries and laying railway lines, apart from strict regulation of tourism and gradual phasing out of chemical pesticides within 5-8 years.

It's hardly surprising that none of the 6 concerned State Govts. (Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat) paid much heed or entertained the idea of accepting and implementing the Gadgil Committee recommendations, and therefore a new committee under Mr. Kasturirangan was established to "examine" the recommendations in a "holistic and multidisciplinary" manner, keeping the interests of the State Govt. in mind.

The Kasturirangan Committee report revealed that out of the 1750 responses that it examined, 80% were not in favour of the Gadgil Committee recommendations, and that Kerala in particular, objected to the proposed bans and restrictions on sand mining and quarrying, energy infrastructure, tourism and river interlinking projects.

The appraisal committee, as expected, came out with a new, complacent set of recommendations that were seemingly easier to implement.

Recently, Madhav Gadgil publicly argued that had his committee's recommendations been verbatim adhered to, the scale of devastation caused by the disaster would have been far less.

Today, as Kerala recuperates from the terrible losses that it has suffered, we need to ask ourselves this question - How safe are we?

With different factors like Climate Change and Land use pattern alterations coming into play and their role and impact in our everyday lives increasing by the day, it is imperative that we ask ourselves and our representatives this question. To suggest that one is safe because he or she may be living away from the coasts and hills where the nature is ostensibly less erratic is a misconception we should get rid of at the earliest. One may recall the unfathomable losses that places like Bihar, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and even Rajasthan (Mount Abu) have suffered in the recent past and it shall work as a reminder to my previous statement. To combat the changing face of nature, one must remember that the methods, mechanisms and instruments that human civilization has devised to provide an ease of life and comfort to all of us, hold the potential to form a deadly combo with nature and going against us. There is an urgent need of creating sustainable development resources that have minimal interference with natural processes that can balance out this equation in the long term, and as for the short term, their is a need to increase resilience indiscriminately, by strengthening the civic management infrastructure, providing state of the art Early Warning Systems, enhancing preparedness for response and recovery and finally taking the private sector and the local public on board. For all purposes of future planning and development, the Madhav Gadgil Committee recommendations and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-30) must be adhered to.