In February 2021, India’s National Marine Turtle Action Plan talked about Galathea Bay on the south-eastern coast of the Great Nicobar Island as certainly one of the “Important Marine Turtle Habitats in India”. Beaches on both facet of the Galathea River are the most vital nesting websites in the northern Indian Ocean for the Leatherback turtle, the world’s largest marine turtle. The Action Plan says that coastal improvement tasks, together with development of ports, jetties, resorts, and industries, are main threats to turtle populations. But this type of improvement is precisely what’s deliberate for the way forward for Galathea Bay underneath the ₹72,000-crore mega challenge piloted by NITI Aayog for the “holistic development” of the Great Nicobar Island (GNI), located at the southern finish of the Andaman and Nicobar group of Islands in the Bay of Bengal.
The large Leatherback will not be the solely species dotting this ecologically and culturally wealthy Island spanning over somewhat greater than 900 sq. km, of which 850 sq. km is designated as a tribal reserve underneath the Andaman and Nicobar Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation, 1956. The Island has been house to 2 remoted and indigenous tribes — the Shompen and the Nicobaris — for 1000’s of years. The GNI was declared a biosphere reserve in 1989 and included in UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Programme in 2013. It has an unparalleled array of microhabitats- sandy and rocky seashores, bays and lagoons, littoral patches with mangrove communities, evergreen and tropical forests, and extra. These habitats host quite a few species, together with marine animals, reptiles, birds, mammals, timber, ferns, bugs, crustaceans, and amphibians. Several of those, like the Nicobari Megapode, are endemic to GNI and located nowhere else in the world.
This distinctive ecological setting faces vital and imminent alterations as the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) late final 12 months cleared the decks for the mega challenge, known as the “Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island”, which ecologists, anthropologists, area specialists, and former civil servants have known as an impending ecological catastrophe. NITI Aayog, nonetheless, says its plan is aimed toward tapping the “largely unexplored potential” of the Island and setting a “model in place for holistic development of few identified islands while preserving and maintaining” their pure ecosystem and wealthy biodiversity.
Map of the ₹72,000-crore mega challenge piloted by NITI Aayog for the “holistic development” of the Great Nicobar Island (GNI). Source: Pre-feasibility report (2021)
The plan has 4 parts — a ₹35,000 crore transshipment port at Galathea Bay, a dual-use military-civil worldwide airport, an influence plant, and a township, to be constructed over 30 years on greater than 160 sq. km of land, of which 130 sq. km is major forest. The northern finish of the challenge falls in the biosphere reserve, which implies part of this protected area must be allotted to the challenge.
Also Read: Proposed infrastructure challenge in Great Nicobar Island a mega folly
As for the inhabitants, the Shompen and the Nicobarese have been the sole inhabitants of the island till the authorities arrange seven income villages, settling 330 ex-servicemen households from 1969 to 1980. These three communities make up the over 8,000 inhabitants of southern Nicobar, which incorporates GNI, Little Nicobar, and different small islands. The mega challenge will deliver practically 400,000 individuals to GNI throughout its span of three a long time, which quantities to a 4,000% improve in its present inhabitants. An estimated 8.5 lakh timber are to be lower down in GNI’s prehistoric rainforests for the challenge.
The authorities clearance given to make use of of about 130 sq. km of pristine forestland final 12 months, made this certainly one of the largest single forest diversions in latest occasions and practically 1 / 4 of all the forest land diverted in the previous three years in the nation. And former civil servants have mentioned in a letter that the plan to hold out compensatory afforestation for this diversion in a far-off arid patch in Haryana “would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic”
Hasty clearances
For a challenge of this scale, dimension, and length, the Great Nicobar plan has been accompanied by uncharacteristic haste in receiving varied clearances. The plan was first floated at the top of the pandemic in 2020 and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation (ANIIDCO), primarily based in Port Blair, was charged with implementing the challenge.
In September of that 12 months itself, NITI Aayog issued a request for proposal for getting ready the grasp plan for the challenge. In March 2021, a little-known firm, Gurugram-based AECOM India Pvt. Ltd, launched a 126-page pre-feasibility report for NITI Aayog. The MoEFCC’s Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC)-Infrastructure I started the environmental clearance course of the very subsequent month and the challenge proponent contracted the Hyderabad-based Vimta Labs to arrange the atmosphere influence evaluation (EIA) report. In October final 12 months, it acquired stage-1 (in-principle) forest clearance, whereas the environmental clearance was given on November 11 by the Ministry. Researchers and activists have flagged inconsistencies in the chronology during which the clearances have been granted, with some procedures starting even earlier than the proposal for them have been cleared.
Also learn: Great Nicobar challenge is not going to evict tribes, says Centre
Besides, the path for the challenge’s spotlight, the cargo port, was made simpler in January 2021, when the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) denotified the Galathea Bay Wildlife Sanctuary to free it as the website for a port. Soon after, the MoEFCC declared a zero- extent eco-sensitive zone for the Galathea and Campbell Bay National Parks, thus making the forest land alongside the central and south-eastern coast of GNI obtainable for the challenge.
The GNI lies between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea in a tectonically delicate zone. Researchers and NGOs from throughout the nation have raised a number of considerations referring to the tectonic volatility and catastrophe vulnerability of the islands, which have skilled practically 444 earthquakes in the previous 10 years. The tribal communities, who have been displaced in the 2004 Tsunami, are nonetheless recovering from its influence.
