Kerala will campaign for notifying the revised proposals for eco-sensitive zones (ESZ) around the protected areas, prepared after excluding populated areas and human habitations.
Recently, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change asked the State government to clarify whether the revised proposals pending before it or the earlier ones could be considered for notification as ESZs.
The State government had earlier submitted revised proposals for ESZs around 15 protected areas to the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change after making the ESZ of populated areas as zero in most cases. It had also kept the ESZ to the minimum level from the forest boundaries in areas where human habitations had come up. The State revised ESZ following widespread protest in human habitations located close to the forest boundaries. Incidentally, the revised proposals could not be finalised and notified as they lapsed after the 725-day validity period of the notifications expired.
17 proposals in 2020
The State had submitted 17 proposals for the declaration of ESZ around 23 protected areas on January 3, 2020, following which the Ministry published the draft notifications of 15, except for Periyar Tiger Reserve, on its website. The final notification for Mathikettan Shola National Park was issued on December 28, 2020.
The government decision to canvass for notifying the revised proposal attains significance in the wake of the Supreme Court directive on April 24 this year that its order for enforcing the 1-km buffer for all protected areas shall not apply to the protected areas for which draft and final notifications were issued by the Ministry. The court had also clarified that a distance of 1 km from the approved forest boundaries shall be demarcated as ESZs in all other protected areas.
Subsisting structures
The earlier proposal of the apex court for marking 1-km ESZ had led to widespread resentment in the State as a large number of human habitations were in the buffer of most of the protected areas. Faced with stiff public resistance, the State carried out a detailed study marking the subsisting structures in the 1-km boundary to argue that the protected areas of the State shall be excluded from the 1-km regime.
