Kerala Landslides: Vijayan Deploys Ministers As Past Warnings On Ecological Sensitivity Resurface

Vijayan said two ministers had reached Wayanad to oversee relief efforts while three more were on the way.

In 2019, a village was wiped out as a hillside almost melted away, bringing down everything in its path at Puthumala in Wayanad. A hillock collapsed in Mallapuram and buried a village of 44 families around the same time.

The disasters occurred in what ecologist Madhav Gadgil-led committee in 2011 and a high-level working group on the Western Ghats headed by former Indian Space Research Organisation chief K Kasturirangan in 2023 described as the “ecologically sensitive zones” of the Ghats.

In an interview with HT, Gadgil warned mindless construction in Western Ghats and the Himalayas were worsening climate disasters. The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, which was constituted by the central government and chaired by Gadgil, recommended in 2011 that 75% of the 129,037 sq km of the Western Ghats spanning Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa, and Kerala be declared an environmentally sensitive area because of its dense, rich forests and a large number of endemic flora and fauna. The panel’s recommendations were not implemented. Gadgil said the climate crisis and unsustainable land use will trigger bigger disasters on India’s west coast.