Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Environment, Headlines

/UPDATE*/ENVIRONMENT DAY: Channel Project Evokes Concerns in India, Sri Lanka

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jun 4 2005 (IPS) - Protests by environmental activists are building up on either side of the Palk Straits against a shipping channel that India will begin dredging this month along its international maritime border with Sri Lanka.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to inaugurate the Sethusamudram Ship Channel Project (SSCP) in the third week of June. At a cost of 550 million U.S. dollars, it is expected to cut sailing time between peninsular India’s eastern and western seaboards by 36 hours and actual distance by 400 nautical miles.

But for all the obvious advantages to navigation, the project, first conceived in 1860 by British naval officer A.D. Taylor, could imperil the delicate marine ecosystem that exists in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mannar Biosphere system and the Palk Bay, say leading environmental activists in both countries.

The project could also destroy the livelihoods of thousands in traditional fishing in an area where people are still struggling to find their feet after the devastating Dec. 26 Asian tsunami that claimed close to 40,000 lives in Sri Lanka and another 10,000 in southern India’s Tamil Nadu state.

Environment groups in Sri Lanka, notably the Environment Foundation Limited (EFL), have been demanding that Colombo take up the issue more seriously than it has so far with New Delhi, and to maintain transparency in its efforts.

Sri Lanka’s Minister for Ports and Aviation, Mangala Samaraweera, was recently quoted saying he was ”concerned” by the project but refrained from elaborating on what is a sensitive issue, with bearing on the island nation’s ethnic problems involving Tamil militant groups in the north.

Addressing a seminar on the issue organised in Colombo by Green Movement of Sri Lanka (GMSL) on May 30, Professor K.N.J. Katupotha of the Sri Jayawardenepura University said environmental groups in his country were unaware of ”any agreement reached on a government-to-government basis” regarding the project.

On Saturday, at the end of a three-day ”working visit” to India by Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, a joint statement issued by the two countries said about the channel project, ”the exchange of views between the Indian and Sri Lankan technical experts should continue… with regard to environmental concerns and prospects of closer economic cooperation between the two countries in the Palk Bay area.”

However, the fact that the environment was mentioned 12th on a list of 14 items in the joint statement seems to indicate that the two countries have noted the concerns but want to play them down.

On its part, representatives of the Indian government have been dismissive about environmental concerns or suggestions that the project would adversely impact artisanal fishing in the area.

”There will be no negative impact. Naturally for any development project there will be some amount of inconvenience and in this case to fishermen but for that we will be taking remedial steps,” T.R. Baalu India’s Minister for road Transport, Highways and Shipping told IPS.

Baalu said his ministry has already drawn up a detailed Environment Management Plan to ensure that the ecological balance in the Palk Straits is preserved during the execution of the project, expected to be completed by 2008, and afterwards.

But voluntary groups and organisations representing the fishing communities have a different story to tell.

”Both the Palk Bay and the Mannar Biosphere Reserve represent a fragile ecological zone that comprises coral reefs, and thousands of species of marine flora and fauna that includes dugongs (sea cow), dolphins and sea turtles,” said Ossie Fernandes, convenor of the Coastal Action Network (CAN), which petitioned the Madras High Court against the project.

Fernandes said while the Tamil Nadu government did conduct a series of public hearings, these are better described as ”eye-wash” because most ended abruptly or turned into free-for-all affairs with nobody seriously considering real concerns expressed, for example, by fishermen’s groups.

But on Dec. 17, CAN lost a writ petition in the Madras High Court against the public hearings with the bench suggesting that the petitioner was trying to ”block a project that is in the national interest.”

The ace that Baalu and authorities involved with the project have against queries from the press is an environmental impact assessment (EIA) report carried out by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) and presented in July last year.

But even the NEERI report envisages displacement of fishing hamlets at places like Dhanushkodi especially if land-based structures like service jetties, slipways, buoy yards and repair workshops and administrative building are to be constructed.

NEERI also mentions ”considerable sea-borne activity in the form of logistics and support services” during the construction phase which could result in ”significant adverse impact on the traditional fishing activities by the licensed fisherfolk and consequently on their income,” and calls for rehabilitation measures.

But the NEERI report presented as it was in July 2004 does not take into account the effect of a tsunami on the dredged sea channel simply because it was presented five months before the Dec. 26 event which caught authorities sleeping for lack of a warning system..

Also NEERI never took into account the concerns of the Sri Lankan government or other experts, said Vinod Munsinghe, spokesman for the Colombo-based Environmental Foundation Limited (EFL) group.

Experts like R.S. Mohan Lal, a marine biologist who worked with the well-known Central Marine Fisheries Institute on the island of Mandapam for more than 14 years, believes that much of the devastation to fisheries and to marine flora and fauna could happen during the execution of the project because of disturbances to the delicate sea bottom caused by dredging, which may involve blasting with dynamite.

Lal has been quoted in local newspapers as saying that large-scale excavation of sand could muddy the waters and block sunlight from reaching the sea bottom, killing coral reefs, pearl banks, sea grass, seaweed, bottle-nosed dolphins, prawns, lobsters, dugongs and a variety of fish.

At the Society for Community Organisation Trust (SOCO Trust) in Madurai city, Lajapathi Roy has been quoted saying that the canal would open a strong current between the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar and alter the water temperature in the Mandapam region, resulting in the destruction of underwater forests in the area.

But all hope is not lost and many environmental groups are gearing up for a prolonged struggle to resist the project and prevent certain and irreparable damage to the environment as well as large-scale displacement of artisanal fishing operations.

Speaking to IPS by telephone, S.P. Udayakumar of the South Asian Community Centre for Education and Research (SACCER), based in Nagercoil City, said one of the good things that happened because of the tsunami was that people in the region had become sensitized to large-scale projects in the area that are anything but environmentally sound.

”Ordinary citizens are now demanding to know the safety aspects of such projects on the coast of Tamil Nadu as the 2,000 megawatt nuclear power project at Koodankulam, the Nuclear Fuel Complex at Palaya Kadal and the Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam, which lost 30 of its staff members to the tsunami,” said Udayakumar.

SACCER has plans to coordinate with Sri Lankan voluntary groups to ensure that the ”development plans of the elite” are not made over the lives and livelihoods of millions of fishermen and people who live on the coasts, he said.

(* Adds information about India visit by Sri Lanka’s president, and joint statement.)