The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has decided to reduce the area of the ecologically sensitive zone (ESZ) in the Western Ghats. The Ministry has issued a draft notification keeping the boundaries of ESZ in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu the same as those proposed by the Kasturirangan Committee. The draft notification declares 56,825 square kilometres as ESZ in the six Western Ghats states.

However, as the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has pointed out, the earlier Gadgil panel (here is the link to the full Gadgil report) identified the entire Ghats as ESZ, creating three categories of protection regimes and listed activities that would be allowed in each based on the level of ecological richness and land use. On the other hand the Kasturirangan panel used a different method. It removed cash crop plantations like rubber, agricultural fields and settlements from ESZ.

It did so by using a finer remote sensing technology. In this way, the Kasturirangan report’s area of ESZ is 37% of the Western Ghats, still a very large 60,000 hectares but less than half the 137,000 hectares proposed by Gadgil.