The Hindu Business Line : Redefining coastal engagement

The Coastal Management Zone notification is being pushed through without even a ritual consult with the main stakeholders — fisherfolk, farmers, artisans, and so on.

Kanchi Kohli
Manju Menon

India’s coastline is one of the most bio-diverse and unique ecosystems in the world. Rocky promontories, sand dunes, coral reefs, rich mangrove tracts, wide beaches teeming with myriad life forms. It is also one of the most densely populated coastlines, supporting the survival of about 10 million fisherfolk.

Most importantly, the lands adjoining the sea-front are critical for the housing of fishing communities. The fisher families from regions such as Kutch in Gujarat have their villages inland, but migrate, with their families, to the sea-front and stay in temporary shelters for months, earning small incomes from fishing.

Yet this region has remained ignored in the environment and development discourse. With the country’s push towards expansion of the manufacturing and service sectors, the coastline is being increasingly sought for the establishment of thermal power plants, tourism facilities, captive ports and Special Economic Zones

Fragile ecology

This has led to these fragile ecological spaces with livelihood connections becoming highly contested on how they should be used, or who should have the first privilege over the use of coastal spaces. Almost all coastal States have seen communities protest against large-scale projects, be it the Gorai SEZ in Maharashtra, the Adani port and SEZ in Gujarat or Posco’s steel plant and captive port in Orissa.

A comprehensive legal resolution to these conflicts, starting with the granting of community rights to the fisher community over the coastal stretches where they have always resided, has been long pending. Most of them still do not have any legal holding over their dwelling spaces or beaches that are essential for conduct of their occupation, such as berthing boats and fish drying. However, instead of setting into motion this process, the Central Government seems to have further stoked the embers.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests issued a draft Coastal Management Zone notification in July 2008, and a mandatory 60-day period was declared so that comments from the public could be received. A highly controversial and opaque process of drafting the notification had preceded this, which was opposed at every stage since it began in 2005.

The CMZ notification seeks to replace its previous avatar, the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification of 1991. The notification had been amended and diluted 17 times in the 19 years of its existence, each time opening the coast for further infrastructure and industrial development.

The formal process to revamp the substantially diluted CRZ notification started in the year 2005, when the MoEF constituted a committee set up under the chairmanship of Dr M. S. Swaminathan. The draft CMZ is based fairly substantially on the principles prescribed in the Swaminathan Committee’s recommendations.

Quite ironically, a law which has a far-reaching impact on coastal communities, including fisherfolk, farmers, artisans, and so on, has been least debated among them. Information received through applications under the Right to Information Act reveals that the internal drafts of the MoEF were discussed essentially with industry representatives and State governments. Even the Coastal Zone Management Authorities (CZMAs), set up for the implementation of the CRZ notification in the States and UTs, were not consulted.

Critical changes

The CMZ notification, among other things, brings in two critical changes in the way regulation along the coast is envisaged for the future. First, it completely does away with the mandatory 500-metre “no development zone” (NDZ) from the high tide line (HTL), along the entire coast. This NDZ essentially comprises ecologically fragile areas such as mangroves, estuaries, turtle nesting beaches, rocky outcrops and sand dunes.

The second is the replacement of the parameters based on which planning of activities along the coast will take place. The HTL, which was used in the CRZ to demarcate areas restricted for infrastructure development, is to be replaced by a scientifically demarcated Set Back Line (SBL). The SBL will need the entry of “scientific experts” to replace the traditional wisdom of the fishing communities and demarcate where what activity can take place on the coast. A reading of the proposed notification makes it obvious that the drafters equate a scientific law with making scientists and bureaucrats the decision-makers. Nowhere will fish-workers and other coastal communities have a say in this land use planning and management. And ironically, they can tell a high tide line better than anyone else!

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment and Forests had invited suggestions on the changes to the foremost legislation meant to regulate development along India’s 8,000-kilometre coastline. The time line was December 12, 2008. The report is still under finalisation.

But well before the Parliamentary Committee states its recommendations, and also well before the finalisation of the proposed notification, the MoEF has begun implementation. The Ministry, along with the State governments of Orissa, West Bengal and Gujarat, is currently engaged in implementing the World Bank funded Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project (ICZMP) approved in February, 2007.

It seeks to pursue one of most critical components of the draft CMZ notification — the demarcation of the SBL and preparation of Integrated Coastal Zone Management Plans. Its insistence of pushing for implementation of a draft legislation and complete apathy towards an existing legal framework is problematic twice over.

(The authors are members of Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group, Delhi. blfeedback@thehindu.co.in)