Wayanad incident a man-made disaster: Union Environment Minister

Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 5 : Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) Bhupender Yadav on Monday said that the Wayanad incident is a man-made disaster and also criticised the Kerala government for failing to preserve the environmental habitation of the state.

“The Kerala government has failed to make proper zones even in the name of tourism. The Wayanad incident is a man-made disaster. The government even allowed the encroachment of this area,” the Union Minister said.

He said that there has been illegal human habitation in Wayanad and illegal mining activities were carried out in the area under the protection of the local government which led to a disastrous situation on July 30.

“It is very shameful. The Kerala government must protect nature and human lives,” the Union Minister said.

Meanwhile, an expert in environment and climate change said that the government needs to explain what happened to the Kasturirangan Gadgil reports.

“Successive Kerala governments have failed to act on these reports because of the vote bank politics. Poor people have always suffered because of these natural disasters,” he said.

He said that many people have asked him for the reasons for Kerala’s environmental changes, witnessed frequently. “The reason is simple, we don’t respect nature,” he said.

One of the former Forest Department officials recalled an incident which took place in 1992 in Mundakayil village, one of the four villages in Wayanad hit by the disaster.

“In 1992, there were only a few encroachers in Mundakayil village. Our team evicted encroachers from about 37 acres. However, a local politician asked the encroachers to attack our team. The attackers torched six of our vehicles and one motorcycle. We had to fire in the air to disperse the crowd. Our six staff members got injured because of stone pelting,” the former forest official said.

He said that the Mundakayil village area is surrounded by hills where resorts have come up even above a 45-degree slope.

“A massive encroachment has taken place with the blessing of the local politicians. I am sure that some of the people who died on July 30 could be those who attacked us in 1992 or their descendants,” said the former forest official.

Kerala’s environmental issues are handled by four agencies -- Kerala State Disaster Management Authority, Directorate of Climate Change (deals with NGOs), Institute of Climate Change Studies, Kottayam and Kerala State Climate Change Adaptation Mission.

All four agencies have been assigned the task to study and mitigate the burning problems faced by Kerala in environmental and climate change. However, all four agencies have a shortage of permanent staff and most of the work is carried out by temporary-hired staff who have less or no experience in tackling sensitive and complex issues like environmental.

The need of the hour is to conduct a thorough audit of all four agencies and check the work they have done so far to safeguard Kerala’s fragile environment.

Importantly, the Environment and Climate Change portfolios are being handled by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

On July 30, four villages of Wayanad were hit by a worst-ever natural disaster in which 402 people died while over 180 continue to remain missing.