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Great Nicobar Mega Development Project

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GREAT NICOBAR MEGA DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

The Congress party has described the proposed Rs 72,000-crore infra upgrade at the Great Nicobar Island as A “grave threat” to the island’s indigenous inhabitants and fragile ecosystem, and demanded “immediate Suspension of all clearances” and a “thorough, impartial review of the proposed project, including by the Parliamentary committees concerned”.

ABOUT GREAT NICOBAR ISLAND

  • Great Nicobar is the southernmost and largest of the Nicobar Islands, a sparsely Inhabited 910-sq-km patch of mainly tropical rainforest in southeastern bay of Bengal.

  • Indira Point on the island, India’s southernmost point, is only 90 nautical miles (less than 170 km) from Sabang at the northern tip of Sumatra, the largest island of the Indonesian archipelago.
  • Great Nicobar has two national parks (Galathea Bay National Park and Campbell Bay National Park, a biosphere reserve (Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve.), small populations of the Shompen and Nicobarese tribal peoples, and a few thousand non-tribal settlers.

THE MoEFCC ON THE PROJECT

Ministry of Environment, forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has granted environmental clearance for diversion of 130.75 sq. Km of forest in Great Nicobar Island (GNI) for mega ₹72,000-crore multi-development projects.

Key condition for the environmental clearance is the submission of a detailed scheme for compensatory afforestation, which is to be done on non-notified forest land.

ABOUT COMPENSATORY AFFORESTATION

  • The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 provide that under compensatory afforestation, when forest land is diverted for non-forest use like mining or infrastructure, the project proponents are required to:
    • Provide funds to the state forest department to do afforestation in a Non-forest land of equal size or
    • Improve a degraded forest land of double the size of the diverted land.
  • The government enacted Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016 to prov ide a proper institutional mechanism for compensatory afforestation matters.
    • To streamline the management of the funds, Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) has been set up at the state level to monitor, assist and evaluate Compensatory afforestation activities in the respective states.
    • The state-level CAMPAS are monitored by a National CAMPA Advisory Council.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

  • NITI Aayog has come up with a plan for the Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island.
    • Project implementation agency is the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation (ANIIDCO).
  • Mega project includes:
  • International container transshipment terminal (ICTT),
  • A military-civil dual use airport,
  • A solar power plant and
  • An integrated township.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT

  • Strategic Importance as it is in close proximity with South East Asia as well as SL. It will give a push to our Act East Policy.
  • Enhanced Security as it will give us a base deep down the IOR. Maritime Piracy, terrorism, illegal trade & undue dominance of China can be Tackled.
  • It can create an economic trade hub in Andaman & Nicobar Island.
  • It may promote tourism.
  • It will also increase employment.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

  • The proposed infra upgrade has been opposed on grounds of the threat it poses to the ecology of the islands.
  • The opposition — by wildlife conservation researchers, anthropologists, scholars, and civil society— has focused on the potentially devastating impact on the Shompen, a particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG) of hunter-gatherers with an estimated population of a few hundred individuals who live in a tribal reserve on the island.
  • It is feared that the port project will destroy coral reefs with spinoff effects on the local marine ecosystem, and pose a threat to the terrestrial Nicobar Megapode bird and leatherback turtles who nest in the Galathea Bay Area.
  • The proposed port is in a seismically volatile zone that saw permanent subsidence of about 15 ft during the 2004 tsunami.

ANY LITIGATIONS?

A statement issued by Congress has accused the local administration of not consulting the Tribal Council of Great and Little Nicobar Islands adequately as per legal requirements.

  • In November 2022, the tribal council revoked a no-objection certificate it had issued for diversion of about 160 sq km of forest land, saying they had not been given full information.
  • In April 2023, the Kolkata Bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) declined to interfere with the environmental and forest clearance granted to the project. The Tribunal ordered that a high-power committee should be constituted to look into the clearances.
    • There is no clarity yet on whether the committee, consisting mainly of government representatives, has submitted its report.

 

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