The giant Leatherback is not the only species
dotting this ecologically and culturally rich Island spanning over a little
more than 900 sq. km, of which 850 sq. km is designated as a tribal reserve
under the Andaman and Nicobar Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation, 1956.
The Island has been home to two isolated and indigenous tribes - the Shompen
and the Nicobaris - for thousands 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 beaches, bays
and lagoons, littoral patches with mangrove communities, evergreen and tropical
forests, and more. These habitats host numerous species, including marine
animals, reptiles, birds, mammals, trees, ferns, insects, crustaceans, and
amphibians. Several of these, like the Nicobari Megapode, are endemic to GNI
and found nowhere else in the world.
This unique ecological setting faces significant
and imminent alterations as the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate
Change (MoEFCC) late last year cleared the decks for the mega project, called
the "Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island", which ecologists,
anthropologists, domain experts, and former civil servants have called an
impending ecological disaster. NITI Aayog, however, says its plan is aimed at
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 natural ecosystem and rich biodiversity.
Map of the Rs.72,000-crore mega project piloted by
NITI Aayog for the "holistic development" of the Great Nicobar Island
(GNI). Source: Pre-feasibility report (2021)
The plan has four components - a Rs.35,000 crore
transshipment port at Galathea Bay, a dual-use military-civil international
airport, a power plant, and a township, to be built over 30 years on more than
160 sq. km of land, of which 130 sq. km is primary forest. The northern end of
the project falls in the biosphere reserve, which means a part of this
protected region will have to be allotted to the project.
As for the population, the Shompen and the
Nicobarese were the sole inhabitants of the island until the government set up
seven revenue villages, settling 330 ex-servicemen families from 1969 to 1980.
These three communities make up the over 8,000 population of southern Nicobar,
which includes GNI, Little Nicobar, and other small islands. The mega project
will bring nearly 400,000 people to GNI during its span of three decades, which
amounts to a 4,000% increase in its current population. An estimated 8.5 lakh
trees are to be cut down in GNI's prehistoric rainforests for the project.
The government clearance given to use of about 130
sq. km of pristine forestland last year, made this one of the largest single
forest diversions in recent times and nearly a quarter of all the forest land
diverted in the past three years in the country. And former civil servants have
said in a letter that the plan to carry out compensatory afforestation for this
diversion in a far away arid patch in Haryana "would be laughable if it
weren't so tragic"
Hasty clearances
For a project of this scale, size, and duration,
the Great Nicobar plan has been accompanied by uncharacteristic haste in
receiving various clearances. The plan was first floated at the height of the
pandemic in 2020 and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development
Corporation (ANIIDCO), based in Port Blair, was charged with implementing the
project.
In September of that year itself, NITI Aayog issued
a request for proposal for preparing the master plan for the project. In March
2021, a little-known company, Gurugram-based AECOM India Pvt. Ltd. released a
126-page pre-feasibility report for NITI Aayog. The MoEFCC's Expert Appraisal
Committee (EAC)-Infrastructure I began the environmental clearance process the
very next month and the project proponent contracted the Hyderabad-based Vimta
Labs to prepare the environment impact assessment (EIA) report. In October last
year, it got stage-1 (in-principle) forest clearance, while the environmental
clearance was given on November 11 by the Ministry. Researchers and activists
have flagged inconsistencies in the chronology in which the clearances were
granted, with some procedures beginning even before the proposal for them was
cleared.
Besides, the path for the project's highlight, the
shipment port, was made easier 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 site 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 along the central and south-eastern coast of
GNI available for the project.
The GNI lies between the Bay of Bengal and the
Andaman Sea in a tectonically sensitive zone. Researchers and NGOs from across
the country have raised several concerns relating to the tectonic volatility
and disaster vulnerability of the islands, which have experienced nearly 444
earthquakes in the past 10 years. The tribal communities, who were displaced in
the 2004 Tsunami, are still recovering from its impact. (The Hindu)
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