Rules related to notify an “Ecologically sensitive areas (ESAs)”

Recently, a senior official mentioned that a draft notification classifying parts of the Western Ghats in six States as Ecologically sensitive areas (ESAs), yet to become law after a decade because of States’ objections.

About the draft:

• The last time this draft was issued was in July 2022.
• The draft had proposed to declare 13 villages in Wayanad, spanning the three talukas of Mananthavady, Sulthan Bathery, and Vythiri, as part of an ESA.
• Despite its six iterations, affected States like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu — have objected to specific places that have been included in the ESA regions.
• The dominant sentiment in Kerala was that this notification would subsume agricultural plantations, curtail the State’s hydro-electricity plans, and lead to a migration crisis given the State’s high population density.

What are Ecologically sensitive areas (ESAs)?

• Ministry Of Environment, Forest and Climate Change notifies Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA), which have unique biological resources and requires special attention for their conservation.
• In so far as the 13 States of Indian Himalayan Region are concerned, 2 ESAs and 92 ESZs have been already notified.
• The last decade has seen significant action around Ecologically Sensitive Areas at the national level.
• The MoEF has defined the term ‘ecological sensitivity’. The criteria and procedure for designation of areas as ‘ecologically sensitive’ have been decided and ‘environmental sensitivity’ has emerged as an important driver of conservation.

Criteria to declare ESAs:

• The Pronab Sen Committee Report was submitted to the MoEF in September 2000. The report mentions that recommendations of the earlier reports (Report of the MoEF on Parameters for Determining Ecological Fragility, 1990 and the Planning Commission Report on Conserving Ecologically Fragile Ecosystems, 1996) that developed parameters had not been effectively implemented;
• The report defines ‘ecological sensitivity / fragility’ as the imminent possibility of permanent and irreparable loss of extant life forms from the world, and of significant damage to the natural processes of evolution and speciation.
• These criteria are divided further into three categories: species-based, ecosystem-based and geomorphological features-based. The species-based category includes criteria like endemism, rarity, presence of endangered species and centres of evolution of domesticated species as primary criteria and centres of lesser-known food plants as auxiliary criteria.
• One of the most significant recommendations of the Pronab Sen Committee Report states that though its criteria only deal with ecological sensitivity, the protection provided by the EPA should address broader environmental concerns as well.