The Supreme Court (SC) on April 26, modified its judgment to have mandatory eco-sensitive zones (ESZ) of a minimum one kilometre around protected forests, national parks and wildlife sanctuaries across the country.
Key points
- A Bench led by Justice B.R. Gavai reasoned that ESZ cannot be uniform across the country and has to be “protected area-specific”.
- On June 3, 2022, the apex court had ordered the 1-km buffer zone for protected areas to act as a “shock absorber”. However, the Centre and several States, including Kerala, had returned to the apex court seeking modification of the June 2022 judgment, saying the judicial direction affected hundreds of villages in the peripheries of forests.
Modified judgement
- The Supeme Court in its modifed order said its direction would not be applicable where national parks and sanctuaries are located on inter-state borders and share common boundaries.
- The order will also not be applicable to draft and final notifications in respect to national parks and sanctuaries issued by the environment ministry and in respect of the proposals that have been received by the ministry.
- The court made it clear that mining within the national park and wildlife sanctuary and within an area of one kilometre from the boundary of such national park and wildlife sanctuary shall not be permissible.
About ESZ
- The 2002 Wildlife Conservation Strategy envisaged lands within 10 km of the boundaries of national parks and wildlife sanctuaries to be notified as ecologically fragile zones or eco-sensitive zones (ESZ) under Section 3(2)(v) of the Environment Protection Act 1986 and its Rules 5(viii) and (x).
- Protected areas cover 5.26% of India’s land area as 108 national parks and 564 wildlife sanctuaries. These protected areas are notified under the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972.
- National parks do away with permissions for even those activities permitted in ‘reserve forests’ while wildlife sanctuaries offer progressively diminishing concessions.
- Surrounding these protected areas is an area of more than 1,11,000 sq. km – or 3.4% percent of the country’s land – which in effect falls under the ESZ regime.
- Governments have notified 341 ESZs in 29 States and five Union territories, while another 85 ESZs are awaiting notification. Together, protected areas and the ESZs cover 8.66% of India’s land area.
- The ESZs span notified forests outside protected areas, most of which could also come under gram sabhas’ jurisdiction under the FRA. The extent of ESZs from the boundary of a protected area ranges from 0 to as much as 45.82 km (in Pin Valley National Park, Himachal Pradesh).
- Fifteen states have ESZs exceeding 10 km.
