Thiruvananthapuram: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has decided to review the controversial High Range Mountain Landscape (HRML) after it found merit in the allegations, including the foreign conspiracy charge, raised by Idukki MP Joice George against the project. Under the project, 11,650 hectares along the eastern high ranges of the state - mostly made up of plantations, habitations and tourism architecture – will be subject to stricter land use regulations than even the ones proposed by the Madhav Gadgil Committee report.
Already 37,000 hectares of the high ranges are protected areas, green swathes where development activities are a strict no. Joice George had raised four major issues. One, the project document does not adequately identify and describe the potential impacts of these restrictions on local farmers and indigenous peoples. Two, the project will adversely impact local communities by creating conservation refugees through displacement, leading to the erosion of their cultural heritage, well-being, and property rights.
Three, the project document’s claims that communities were consulted are fabricated. Four, the project document fails to reflect the current relationship of local communities to the areas targeted for protection, failing to reflect, for example, community efforts to protect these areas. Mr George’s biggest charge was that HRML was a big foreign conspiracy.
“If you are really interested in the conservation of environment, ecology and biodiversity in the Western Ghats, let us have an initiative with the involvement, participation and prior informed consent of the people by keeping away the mafia including foreign fund hungry NGOs and officials,” he wrote to the UNDP. “People in the project area strongly believe that this is also an attempt to impose environmental colonialism in our land rendering the indigenous people and farmers as conservation refugees,” he added. However, UNDP has already sanctioned '200 crore for the project and the implementation has long begun.
