Ecologically sensitive areas protect ecosystems but threaten livelihoods. Discuss with reference to the Western Ghats.

Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESAs), notified under Section 5 of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 [1], regulate activity in fragile landscapes. In the Western Ghats — a global biodiversity hotspot — this regulatory shield collides with the livelihoods of hill communities, making the conflict one of design rather than of principle.

The ecological case for ESAs

• The Kasturirangan High Level Working Group found roughly 37% of the Western Ghats — about 60,000 sq km across Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu — ecologically sensitive [2].
• It recommended prohibiting only the most damaging activities: mining, quarrying, sand mining, polluting industries including thermal power, and large townships [2].
• The 2024 Wayanad landslides, which caused heavy loss of life and drew a Parliamentary debate [3], showed the cost of unregulated slope alteration in the Ghats.
• With no final notification yet, protection rests only on interim directions — a weak substitute for a notified regime.

The livelihood anxieties

• The revenue village is the mapping unit: a village with a sensitive fraction of its area is brought wholly inside the ESA, sweeping in farmland and settlements [2].
• The exercise rests on 2012 remote-sensing data; ground-truthing ordered by the Centre remains incomplete, so errors persist on the map.
• States have consistently sought reduction in the extent of the ESA and relaxation of activities [4], and successive draft notifications since 2014 have lapsed for want of concurrence [5] — leaving farmers and planners in prolonged uncertainty. Karnataka's Assembly has now rejected the Report outright.

Way forward: complete ground-truthing and draw sub-village boundaries, as Kerala did, so that a farm and a forest slope are treated differently; refresh the satellite base; grade restrictions instead of shrinking area; and settle rights under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 through gram sabha consultation.

Conservation and livelihood are not rival claims in the Ghats — an accurate, participatory map can secure both, advancing the Article 48A duty to protect the environment and SDG 15 on life on land.