Great Nicobar project: Jairam says govt 'underestimating' number of trees to be felled

Congress MP and general-secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh has said the environment ministry's claim that 8.5 lakh trees will be felled for the Great Nicobar Integrated Development Project is a "gigantic under-estimate", and asserted that the only sensible way forward is for the project to be paused and reviewed.

Ramesh, also a former Union environment minister, shared a media report on X, which said the government claimed that only 50 per cent of this forest area — around 6,500 hectares — would actually be deforested, and that around 8.5 lakh trees would be felled. However, according to calculations by a rainforest ecologist with three decades of experience, these deforestation figures are a gross underestimation.

In a post on X, Ramesh said, "The Union Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change has been claiming that 8.5 lakh trees will get felled while executing the Great Nicobar Integrated Development Project.

"This has been known to be a gigantic under-estimate. Now we have independent estimates that anywhere between 32 lakh and 58 lakh trees will have to be destroyed. It could even be much more depending on the rich forest areas being cleared out," he said.

The only sensible way forward is for "this disaster of a project" to be paused and reviewed thoroughly by an independent and professionally competent team, the Congress general-secretary said, adding that "egos and prestige" must be set aside.

Ramesh has been asserting that the present design of the Great Nicobar Island infrastructure project "endangers ecology" in a "needlessly unacceptable manner."

In a letter to Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav, Ramesh had also questioned the credibility, composition, and conclusions of a high-powered committee (HPC) tasked to revisit the environmental clearances granted to the Great Nicobar Island infrastructure project.

Ramesh and Yadav have exchanged a series of letters on the project. On 27 August, Ramesh had hit back at the environment ministry's assertion that clearances for the Great Nicobar Island project were granted after careful consideration, saying the environmental impact assessment study for it appears to have been primed to ensure its clearance in the form proposed by the NITI Aayog.

In a 10-page letter to Yadav, Ramesh had said even if one were to accept the strategic and defence importance of the project, it would not preclude any discussion of its impact on the island's tribal communities and natural ecosystem.

"Nobody can be against 'strategic considerations' but surely a better balance between them and ecological concerns can and must be struck which is certainly missing in this case," he had said in his communication to Yadav which came in continuation of a series of letter exchanges between the two.

In response to a letter from Ramesh on 10 August, Yadav said on 21 August that the environmental and forest clearances granted by his ministry have "withstood judicial scrutiny".