Munnar has been taken out of the Rs.45-crore United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project for conserving the biodiversity of mountain landscapes of the Western Ghats.
The Ministry of Environment and Forest and Climate Change conveyed the decision to “cancel Munnar as the project site” to the Principal Secretary of Forest of the Kerala government on November 1.
The proposed project, part of the India High Range Mountain Landscape Project, was greeted with stiff resistance by some political quarters alleging that its implementation would lead to loss of livelihood options to farmers and tribes of the region. It was proposed to revisit the boundaries of the Protected Areas (PA) in the project site by excluding human habitations that fell under the PAs and to include biodiversity-rich areas without any human habitation to the PAs.
Eleven biodiversity-rich grama panchayats at Devikulam and Kuttanpuzha were to become the focal point of the programme, A High Range Sustainable Development Society was to be formed to manage the conservation drive with representatives of all stakeholders as its members.
The UNDP project was for “developing an effective multiple use management framework for conserving the biodiversity in the mountain landscape of the High Ranges, the Western Ghats.”
The Ministry’s decision came as there was no response from the State government for the project, which was “reviewed several times with concerned stakeholders,” the letter said.
The project, which has “already accessed $7 million of Global Environment Facility grant,” will have to be “re-programmed with a new project site, which could be either in Kerala or some other State, preferably in the Western Ghats,” it cautioned.
Responding to the development, S.M. Vijayanand, Chief Secretary, said a meeting would soon be convened to thrash out the issues raised by certain quarters and pave the way for the implementation of the project.
It will be a big miss if Munnar loses the project. Most of the apprehensions raised by those who are opposed to it are unsustainable ones. The UNDP has also offered to make some changes in the programmes to facilitate its implementation. The government will convene a meeting of political representatives from the region to discuss the issue, he said.
