Context: The eastern bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) has ordered a stay on the ₹72,000 crore Great Nicobar Island project and constituted a committee to revisit the environmental clearance granted by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC).
About the Great Nicobar Island Project
- The Great Nicobar Island (GNI) Project is a mega project to be implemented at the southern end of the Andaman and Nicobar islands.
- The project will include, among others, an International Container Transhipment Terminal (ICTT), a Greenfield international airport, a township, and a 450 MVA gas- and solar-based power plant over 16,610 hectares in the Great Nicobar Islands.
Impacts:
- Tectonic Volatility: The GNI lies between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea in a tectonically sensitive zone.
- “Important Marine Turtle Habitats in India”:
- In February 2021, India’s National Marine Turtle Action Plan mentioned Galathea Bay on the south-eastern coast of the Great Nicobar Island as one of the “Important Marine Turtle Habitats in India”.
- Beaches on either side of the Galathea River are the most important nesting sites in the northern Indian Ocean for the Leatherback turtle, the world’s largest marine turtle.
- The Action Plan says that coastal development projects, including the construction of ports, jetties, resorts, and industries, are major threats to turtle populations.
- Impact on tree cover:
- The loss of tree cover will not only affect the flora and fauna on the island, it will also lead to increased runoff and sediment deposits in the ocean, impacting the coral reefs in the area.
- Destruction of Tribal land:
- GNI is designated as a tribal reserve under the Andaman and Nicobar Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation, 1956.
- The Island has been home to two isolated and indigenous tribes — the Shompen and the Nicobaris — for thousands of years.
- UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Programme in 2013:
- The GNI was declared a biosphere reserve in 1989 and included in UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Programme in 2013.
- It has an unparalleled array of microhabitats- sandy and rocky beaches, bays and lagoons, littoral patches with mangrove communities, evergreen and tropical forests, and more.
- These habitats host numerous species, including marine animals, reptiles, birds, mammals, trees, ferns, insects, crustaceans, and amphibians.
- Several of these, like the Nicobari Megapode, are endemic to GNI and found nowhere else in the world.
- Concerns Against the Project
- Shompen people will be displaced leading to their total marginalisation.
- Endemic flora and fauna will be displaced.
- Diversion of forests and coastal development not allowed under
- Tribals have not been adequately consulted.
- Rationale for the project
- Countering China’s increasing presence in the Indian Ocean Region
- Curb the stealing of marine resources by poachers from Myanmar
- Bridge infrastructure gaps in the region,
- Promote international trade by allowing the port to provide an alternative to Singapore ports.
About Great Nicobar:
- Great Nicobar, the southernmost of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, has an area of 910 sq km.
- The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are a cluster of about 836 islands in the eastern Bay of Bengal, the two groups of which are separated by the 150-km wide Ten Degree Channel.
- The Andaman Islands lie to the north of the channel, and the Nicobar Islands to the south.
- Indira Point on the southern tip of Great Nicobar Island is India’s southernmost point, less than 150 km from the northernmost island of the Indonesian archipelago.
- The island comprises of unique and threatened tropical evergreen forest ecosystems.
- The region is noted for its rich biodiversity and fosters several rare and endemic species.
- The endemic species comprise of 11 species of mammals, 32 species of birds, 7 species of reptiles and 4 species of amphibians.
- Of these, the well-known Crab-eating Macaque, Nicobar Tree Shrew, Nicobar Megapode, are endemic and/or endangered.
- It is home to 650 species of angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms, bryophytes, among others.
- One of the most unique aspects of Great Nicobar is the southernmost point, the Galathea Bay, a nesting ground for the Leatherback Turtle.
- The primary human inhabitants of the island are the Shompen and Nicobarese tribes who have been living on the island for countless generations.
- The Shompen tribe are an aboriginal people of about 200 to 300 members who inhabit the interiors of Great Nicobar.
- This particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG) is a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer community, practicing basic horticulture and pig rearing, who probably migrated around 10,000 years ago.
- They are a unique group, anthropologically completely distinct from the other PVTGs of the Andaman Island as well as from the Nicobarese.
- Their language, Shompanese, unrelated to any other existing language, seems to have adopted a few words from Nicobarese in the context of an existing, even if very limited, barter system between the two communities.