Stories
NGO Demands Clarity: Local Body ESA Resolutions Not Exclusion Orders
- •Animals and Nature Ethics Community (ANEC) Trust sent a legal notice to the Kerala government regarding Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) draft notification.
- •The NGO demands strict legal compliance, transparency, and accountability for Grama Panchayat resolutions concerning the ESA notification.
- •ANEC clarifies it's not preventing local concerns but ensuring resolutions aren't portrayed as orders altering an area's statutory environmental status.
- •The NGO states that environmentally harmful activities causing damage will result in liability for environmental compensation, restoration, and remediation, not shifted to the public exchequer.
- •ANEC calls for preservation of all relevant physical and electronic records and emphasizes that the ESA process must proceed through law, science, transparent public participation, and accountable decision-making.
Key Questions Answered
The Kochi-based ANEC Trust sent a legal notice demanding that no local body resolution regarding the Western Ghats ESA draft notification be portrayed as an exclusion order. It emphasized that local representations cannot alter or determine statutory environmental status and must be properly described as requests, recommendations, or objections.
The notice states that if any environmentally harmful activity causes habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, or soil erosion, the responsible person or entity is liable for environmental compensation, restoration, and recovery. This liability cannot be shifted to the public exchequer, and official positions do not provide immunity against statutory breaches.
The Kerala government decided to ask the Centre to completely exclude inhabited areas and agricultural lands from the purview of Ecologically Sensitive Areas. Additionally, the Kerala Catholic Bishops' Council urged both the Centre and the state to resolve the long-pending issue as the Union Ministry reissued the draft notification for the seventh time.