Kasturirangan report: Organisations come together to make joint submission to strengthen and finalise 7th ESA draft

A group of organisations from Karnataka have made a joint submission to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the Karnataka government to strengthen and finalise the seventh draft notification on the Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area. | Photo Credit: special arrangement A group of organisations from Karnataka have made a joint submission to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and the Karnataka government to strengthen and finalise the seventh draft notification on the Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA).The report, jointly submitted by Bangalore Environment Forum (Bengaluru), Fridays for Future (Bengaluru), Green Lives (Shivamogga), Jana Sangrama Parishad (Shivamogga), Mapping Malnad (Bengaluru), Paryavarani Foundation (Belagavi), Sangatya (Karkala), United Conservation Movement (Udupi), and Human Rights Foundation (Udupi), calls for stronger ecological safeguards, corrected ESA boundaries, effective monitoring and enforcement, and official translations in local languages. Stress on biodiversity increasingNoting that six previous draft notifications have lapsed since the process began in August 2011, the report stresses the need to “strengthen the seventh draft to reflect today’s worsening ecological realities, and finalise the Western Ghats ESA Notification without further delay.”“While the political climate has turned against protection, the ecological context has changed considerably for the worse during the 15 years of delay,” says the report, which points out that within the Western Ghats, regional and local pressures have driven the loss and degradation of natural forests, increasing stress on biodiversity and freshwater systems, and growing risks from extreme rainfall and landslides. Stronger protectionsStressing that the draft notification does not displace people, take away land ownership, prohibit agriculture or plantations, restrict existing homes, or interfere with the ordinary lives of people living within the ESA, the report proposes stronger protections.These include prohibiting large hydropower and pumped-storage projects and major linear infrastructure within the ESA, bringing large-scale renewable-energy projects under environmental assessment, protecting steep and landslide-vulnerable slopes from large construction, strengthening cumulative impact assessment and public consultation, and establishing effective monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. “Meaningful public participation also requires the notification to be available in local languages. While we have provided a professionally translated and notarised Kannada version, this does not absolve the State government of its responsibility to provide an official Kannada translation,” it adds. ‘Correct errors’The report submitted also calls for correcting any errors before finalising the seventh draft.“Mapping Malnad’s preliminary GIS analysis finds a difference of about 863 sq km between the mapped and stated ESA area. The analysis also identifies village-name errors, while some landslide-prone steep slopes and important headwater streams remain outside the proposed ESA and should be included,” says the report, while demanding that an authoritative and publicly accessible GIS database should form the basis for correcting and finalising the ESA boundaries. Published - September 26, 2026 07:45 pm IST