333 Villages Listed as Environmentally Sensitive in MMR

The Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change has released a draft notification, listing 2,515 villages in Maharashtra as environmentally sensitive areas. These villages are spread across 13 districts in the state. Among these, 333 villages are in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). 

The notice was released on July 31. As per the previous draft notification released in 2022, there were 2,133 eco-sensitive villages in Maharashtra. This number has now increased by 382. This means that the state's eco-sensitive region has increased by 17 per cent.

Most of the 333 MMR villages listed are in the Thane and Palghar districts. This includes tehsils like Shahapur, Murbad, Wada, Mokhada, and Jawhar.

The Western Ghats Ecosystem covers 56,825 square kilometres across six states. Out of this, 17,340 square kilometres are in Maharashtra. The notification proposes a ban on quarrying, mining, and sand mining in these environmentally sensitive areas. Current mines will be phased out over five years. 

The notification also forbids the development of severely polluting enterprises. New thermal power projects are also not allowed in these areas. The government has given people sixty days to submit their comments and concerns regarding the draft.

Since 2011, notifications have been issued listing the eco-sensitive areas in the Western Ghats. In 2011, an ecologist-led committee, headed by Madhav Gadgil, recommended that 75 per cent of the 129,037 square kilometres of the Western Ghats be declared eco-sensitive. 

This was due to the dense forests and numerous endemic species present. Three years later, a panel led by rocket scientist K. Kasturirangan reduced this area to 50 per cent. A draft notification in 2018 further reduced it to 37 percent of the western ghats.

However, concerns from state governments have prevented these notifications from being finalised. The most recent notification was released in 2022. The latest draft was published a day after a major landslide in Kerala's Wayanad district, which resulted in over 300 deaths.