Nicobar’s ecological hubris

The National Green Tribunal’s (NGT’s) decision to quash a batch of petitions questioning the environmental clearance granted to the Great Nicobar Island Development Project exposes the gap between institutional definitions of environmental safeguards and the reality on the ground.

- CHINTAN GIRISH MODI

While the NITI Aayog’s plan to construct a transshipment terminal, an airport, a power plant, and anew township has the blessings of the NGT, acollection of essays and interviews titled Island on Edge, edited by Pankaj Sekhsaria, interrogates the environmental ethics of the project. It urges readersto wake up and take notice of the massacre waiting to beset in motion, thanksto an anthropocentric mindset that views forestsas an obstacle rather thana livingecosystem.

Inthe titular essay of this collection, MrSekhsaria, an associate professor at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay’s Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas, who has written extensively about the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, points out that “a massive 130 square kilometres of largely primary tropical rainforest” will be cleared tobring this project to fruition. Estimates about the number of trees that will becut vary from 8,65,000 to 9,64,000 to 10 million. One wonders how a country that celebrates the Chipko movement, an eco-feminist revolution, can allow this potential ecocide.