Let the Western Ghats breathe

Why in the News

The Rs 10,000 crore, 2,000 MW Sharavathi Pumped Storage Project in Karnataka is under an interim stay by the Karnataka High Court, with work frozen until further orders. The project sits entirely inside the Sharavathi Valley Lion-Tailed Macaque Wildlife Sanctuary. An expert panel constituted by the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) had earlier recommended against approving it. The contest is between a state that needs storage to absorb intermittent renewable power and a protected rainforest where such construction is barred outright.

How does the Sharavathi Pumped Storage Project work?

1. What it connects: The project links the Talakalale and Gerusoppa reservoirs on the already heavily dammed Sharavathi river.
2. What has to be built: The link runs through massive underground tunnels and powerhouses cut into the valley.
3. The pumping cycle: Water is pumped uphill during off-peak hours, when demand and power prices are low.
4. The generating cycle: The stored water is released downhill to generate power during peak demand.

Why do the Western Ghats matter beyond their species counts?

1. Scale of the chain: The Western Ghats run 1,600 kilometres along the edge of the peninsula.
2. Global standing: They are one of the world’s eight hottest biodiversity hotspots.
3. What they hold: They harbour nearly half of India’s flowering plant species, a third of its vertebrate fauna, and over 300 globally threatened species.
4. Narrow endemics: Species such as the Katlekan Marsh Nut and the Gund Day Gecko are found only in these forests and nowhere else.
5. What primary forest looks like: In the Katlekan dark forest of North Kanara the canopy cuts out light so completely that a torch is needed at midday, a structure the fragmented woodlots counted as forest elsewhere do not reproduce.

What do the Ghats do for the peninsula’s water and climate?

1. First contact with the monsoon: The chain takes the first impact of the southwest monsoon and releases it downstream.
2. Source of the Deccan’s rivers: The Godavari, Krishna, Kaveri and Tungabhadra all originate here, sustaining hundreds of millions of people across six states.
3. Regional climate function: The dense forests temper regional climate, draw down carbon, hold soil in place, and soften the runoff and flooding that would otherwise reach the downstream plains.
4. A moisture recycling system: Like the Amazon basin, these rainforests cycle moisture back into the atmosphere, which sustains the monsoon that feeds them.

Why did the wildlife expert panel advise against approval?

1. The siting is barred by law: The project lies wholly within a wildlife sanctuary that carries one of the highest levels of protection under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, where such infrastructure is strictly prohibited.
2. The panel’s finding: The expert panel constituted by the NBWL Standing Committee recommended against approval, citing irreversible ecological harm.
3. The technical objection: The panel questioned the project’s technical justification and found it would yield no new net energy to the grid.
4. A net energy loss: Pumping requirements would produce a net loss of approximately 500 MW.

What are the physical costs of building inside the sanctuary?

1. Primary forest cleared: The project requires clearing over 50 hectares of dense primary evergreen forest.
2. Corridors broken: The clearance fragments wildlife corridors between the Anshi-Dandeli and Bhadra-Kudremukh landscapes, cutting the routes large mammals use to move between the two.
3. Landslide risk: The zone is geologically fragile, and blasting for underground tunnels and powerhouses with heavy industrial explosives raises the risk of slope failure.

Does rejecting the project leave Karnataka’s storage need unanswered?

1. The need is real and conceded: Karnataka has an installed renewable energy capacity of 20.23 GW, and critics of the project accept that this output has to be firmed up.
2. Why storage is the constraint: Solar and wind generation is intermittent, so the grid needs a way to shift surplus power to hours of peak demand.
3. The options are plural, not singular: Battery Energy Storage Systems, compressed air energy storage and gravity energy storage sit alongside pumped storage as ways to manage that intermittency.
4. The siting question is separable from the technology question: Accepting the need for storage does not settle where a storage project may be built.

Conclusion

The argument is not that pumped storage is wrong, it is that this catchment is the wrong place to put it. A project that yields no new net energy and consumes more power than it returns cannot justify clearing primary evergreen forest. The Karnataka High Court’s interim stay holds the position for now. What remains unresolved is whether the clearance system will treat the highest protection category as an absolute siting bar or as a threshold that can be crossed on a case by case finding.

What is Environmental Impact Assessment?

1. About: Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a planning tool that predicts and seeks to mitigate the environmental consequences of a project before it is approved.
2. Statutory history: India introduced EIA in 1978 for river valley projects, made it statutory through the 1994 notification under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, and consolidated it in the EIA Notification, 2006.
3. Who appraises what: Category A projects are appraised centrally by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, and Category B projects by the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority, with Category B1 alone requiring a full study and a public hearing.

Challenges in Environmental Impact Assessment

1. Conflict of interest in who pays: The assessment is funded by the project proponent, which creates an incentive to understate impacts. Eg. Independent data on the Mundra Port and Special Economic Zone exposed deficiencies the proponent’s own assessment had missed. Fix. Have EIA reports audited by an autonomous body not funded by the proponent.
2. Cumulative impact goes unmeasured: Appraisal runs project by project, so the combined load on one river is never assessed. Eg. National Green Tribunal orders in 2024 and 2025 cancelled clearances on this ground. Fix. Move to landscape level cumulative assessment for a whole catchment.

Back2Basics: Sharavathi Valley Lion-Tailed Macaque Wildlife Sanctuary

1. Location: In the Sharavathi river valley, Shivamogga district, Karnataka.
2. Landmarks within it: Jog Falls and the Linganamakki reservoir lie inside it.
3. Flagship species: The lion-tailed macaque, an endemic arboreal primate, is a keystone seed disperser and an indicator of forest health.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2024, GS3, 10 marks] What role do environmental NGOs and activists play in influencing Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) outcomes for major projects in India? Cite four examples with all important details.”