In February 2021, India’s National Marine Turtle Action Plan talked about Galathea Bay on the south-eastern coast of the Great Nicobar Island as one of many “Important Marine Turtle Habitats in India”. Beaches on both facet of the Galathea River are an important nesting websites within the northern Indian Ocean for the Leatherback turtle, the world’s largest marine turtle. The Action Plan says that coastal growth initiatives, together with development of ports, jetties, resorts, and industries, are main threats to turtle populations. But this type of growth is strictly what’s deliberate for the way forward for Galathea Bay beneath the ₹72,000-crore mega project piloted by NITI Aayog for the “holistic development” of the Great Nicobar Island (GNI), located on the southern finish of the Andaman and Nicobar group of Islands within the Bay of Bengal.

The big Leatherback will not be the one species dotting this ecologically and culturally wealthy Island spanning over just a little greater than 900 sq. km, of which 850 sq. km is designated as a tribal reserve beneath the Andaman and Nicobar Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation, 1956. The Island has been house to 2 remoted and indigenous tribes — the Shompen and the Nicobaris — for 1000’s of years. The GNI was declared a biosphere reserve in 1989 and included in UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Programme in 2013. It has an unparalleled array of microhabitats- sandy and rocky seashores, bays and lagoons, littoral patches with mangrove communities, evergreen and tropical forests, and extra. These habitats host quite a few species, together with marine animals, reptiles, birds, mammals, timber, ferns, bugs, crustaceans, and amphibians. Several of those, just like the Nicobari Megapode, are endemic to GNI and located nowhere else on this planet.

This distinctive ecological setting faces vital and imminent alterations because the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) late final 12 months cleared the decks for the mega mission, known as the “Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island”, which ecologists, anthropologists, area specialists, and former civil servants have known as an impending ecological catastrophe. NITI Aayog, nevertheless, says its plan is aimed toward tapping the “largely unexplored potential” of the Island and setting a “model in place for holistic development of few identified islands while preserving and maintaining” their pure ecosystem and wealthy biodiversity.

The plan has 4 elements — a ₹35,000 crore transshipment port at Galathea Bay, a dual-use military-civil worldwide airport, an influence plant, and a township, to be constructed over 30 years on greater than 160 sq. km of land, of which 130 sq. km is primary forest. The northern finish of the mission falls within the biosphere reserve, which implies part of this protected area must be allotted to the mission.

Also Read: Proposed infrastructure project in Great Nicobar Island a mega folly

As for the inhabitants, the Shompen and the Nicobarese have been the only real inhabitants of the island till the federal government arrange seven income villages, settling 330 ex-servicemen households from 1969 to 1980. These three communities make up the over 8,000 inhabitants of southern Nicobar, which incorporates GNI, Little Nicobar, and different small islands. The mega mission will carry practically 400,000 folks to GNI throughout its span of three many years, which quantities to a 4,000% enhance in its present inhabitants. An estimated 8.5 lakh timber are to be reduce down in GNI’s prehistoric rainforests for the mission.

The authorities clearance given to make use of of about 130 sq. km of pristine forestland final 12 months, made this one of many largest single forest diversions in current occasions and practically 1 / 4 of all of the forest land diverted previously three years within the nation. And former civil servants have stated in a letter that the plan to hold out compensatory afforestation for this diversion in a far-off arid patch in Haryana “would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic”

Hasty clearances

For a mission of this scale, dimension, and period, the Great Nicobar plan has been accompanied by uncharacteristic haste in receiving varied clearances. The plan was first floated on the top of the pandemic in 2020 and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation (ANIIDCO), primarily based in Port Blair, was charged with implementing the mission.

In September of that 12 months itself, NITI Aayog issued a request for proposal for making ready the grasp plan for the mission. In March 2021, a little-known firm, Gurugram-based AECOM India Pvt. Ltd, launched a 126-page pre-feasibility report for NITI Aayog. The MoEFCC’s Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC)-Infrastructure I started the environmental clearance course of the very subsequent month and the mission proponent contracted the Hyderabad-based Vimta Labs to arrange the atmosphere affect evaluation (EIA) report. In October final 12 months, it received stage-1 (in-principle) forest clearance, whereas the environmental clearance was given on November 11 by the Ministry. Researchers and activists have flagged inconsistencies within the chronology during which the clearances have been granted, with some procedures starting even earlier than the proposal for them have been cleared.

Also learn: Great Nicobar project will not evict tribes, says Centre

Besides, the trail for the mission’s spotlight, the cargo port, was made simpler in January 2021, when the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) denotified the Galathea Bay Wildlife Sanctuary to free it as the positioning for a port. Soon after, the MoEFCC declared a zero- extent eco-sensitive zone for the Galathea and Campbell Bay National Parks, thus making the forest land alongside the central and south-eastern coast of GNI obtainable for the mission.

The GNI lies between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea in a tectonically delicate zone. Researchers and NGOs from throughout the nation have raised a number of considerations referring to the tectonic volatility and catastrophe vulnerability of the islands, which have skilled practically 444 earthquakes previously 10 years. The tribal communities, who have been displaced within the 2004 Tsunami, are nonetheless recovering from its affect.