Kerala should not sacrifice its ecosystem for weekend motorists

It is inexplicable why the Kerala government is rushing the controversial tunnel road project when there are less damaging alternatives available, starting with the expansion and strengthening of existing ghat roads

The Kerala government's plans to build an 8.7-kilometre tunnel from Anakkampoyil in Kozhikode to Meppadi in Wayanad to ease the infamous traffic congestion on weekends and holidays on the Thamarasserry Ghat Road (NH 766) is a vanity project which must be scrapped in the light of the July 30 landslides, the largest in India’s recorded history that claimed nearly 250 lives, with hundreds still missing and thousands permanently displaced from their homes.

The landslides, a direct result of a typical climate change-induced extreme weather event, torrential rains of 572 millimetres (6 per cent of the region’s annual rainfall) in the 48 hours preceding the event, devastated the villages of Punchirimattam, Chooralmala, and Mundakkai, and resulted in a debris flow of nearly six million cubic metres stretching eight kilometres downhill. On August 29, 2019, 17 people were killed in a landslide in Puthumala, less than 3 kilometres away from the site of the latest disaster.

The Kerala government’s flagship project, the two-lane subterranean road tunnel, India’s third longest tunnel will offer a wider and alternate route to the existing Thamarassery Ghat road and would significantly reduce the travel time between Kozhikode and Bengaluru. Traffic jams have certainly increased on the ghat road, especially during weekends and festive holidays.

However, it is now well known that adding more capacity to a road network simply encourages more people to bring their cars out and in no time the congestion is as bad as before. From 2005 to 2022, the number of tourists visiting Wayanad has increased eightfold. According to Kerala Tourism Statistics, 1,513,141 tourists visited the area in 2022, up from 193,068 in 2005. 

This is exactly why a Kerala High Court bench, while considering a case initiated suo moto following the Wayanad landslide, asked the government to submit details of the carrying capacity of all the major hill stations in the state by October 25.

What is more alarming is that the Pinarayi Vijayan government is ignoring its own State Level Expert Appraisal Committee (SEAC)’s warnings about blasting and tunnelling activities in an unstable and ecologically sensitive area of Western Ghats that acts like a magnet for unpredictable torrential rains, soil erosion, and regular landslides.

Many survivors of the Wayanad landslides have blamed the preliminary work for the tunnel as the cause of the landslides. Interestingly, even Konkan Railway has warned that ‘due to drilling and blasting the unstable formation encountered in the region can be affected’, in its executive summary report. The Wayanad Prakrithi Samrakshana Samithi, a local environmental group, claims that many feeders of river Chaliyar which originate from the Wayanad-Kozhikode Mountains will be affected by the road tunnel project.

According to the map of Kerala, an area of 3,300 sq. km is highly susceptible to landslides. Wayanad district ranks 13th out of 147 districts in India on landslide vulnerability across 17 states and two union territories. Within Kerala, Wayanad ranks fifth among the 14 districts, following Thrissur, Palakkad, Malappuram, and Kozhikode. More critically, it is well known that the intensification of short-duration heavy rainfall with increased atmospheric moisture due to climate change, are dominant triggers for heavy landslides in Kerala.

It is inexplicable why the state government is rushing the controversial project when there are less damaging alternatives available, starting with the expansion and strengthening of existing ghat roads, and further expanding the Vadakara-Kuttiyadi-Mananthavady road. Residents are still waiting for the completion of the Poozhithode-Padinjarathara alternative road, work for which started in 1994.

The Western Ghats is Kerala’s keystone ecosystem, these mountains have rock formations which are more than 150 million years old, Elephants mingle here with several species of flora and fauna endemic only to the Nilgiris-Wayanad-Coorg stretch of the Western Ghats. Instead of sacrificing its extremely fragile ecology for weekend motorists, Kerala should declare a moratorium on all further construction activities and conduct scientific studies to understand how climate change combined with unscientific development has resulted in incessant heavier-than-usual rains, flash floods, landslides, and back-to-back disasters.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan must see the disaster in Wayanad as a final warning by nature that construction in hilly regions without sufficient risk assessment in a climate-constrained world is a recipe for disaster.

(Shailendra Yashwant is a senior adviser to Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA). X: @shaibaba.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.