The Assam government recently announced plans to approach the Centre to shrink the Eco-Sensitive Zone (ESZ), a buffer zone around protected areas, to a minimum of 1 km instead of the default 10 km. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s argument that an ESZ of more than 1 km around Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve would affect civic and urban growth in surrounding towns has stoked controversy and raised questions about the government’s seriousness about conserving natural assets.
In other words, it is considered a transition zone between high-protection areas and low-protection areas, without affecting the daily activities of people living in the vicinity. Such activities have three categories—prohibited, regulated and permitted. The National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) adopted a resolution in 2002 to declare such buffer zones around protected areas under the Environment (Protection) Act of 1986. As part of the National Wildlife Action Plan (2002-2016), the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) instructed the State governments in 2011 to submit site-specific proposals for ESZs, with a general guideline that a buffer zone should be up to 10 km from the periphery of a protected area. The guidelines allowed an ESZ to exceed the 10-km limit to include larger ecologically important sensitive corridors, connectivity patches, and vital landscape linkages.
An ESZ is envisaged as a shock absorber to minimise the impact of certain human activities on the fragile ecosystem of the protected areas, according to the NBWL.
The default 10 km ESZ extent remains in force for protected areas unless a State government submits or receives a final, site-specific notification approved by the MoEFCC, according to the rules. The Chief Minister cited the case of Deepor Beel, a Ramsar Site on the south-western edge of Guwahati, to argue that Bokakhat, Kaliabor and other surrounding towns warrant a 1-km ESZ for Kaziranga. The Chief Minister also referred to a Supreme Court order to announce plans to approach the Centre for a baseline ESZ buffer of 1 to 3 km around Kaziranga. Based on objections from some States, specifically Kerala, which wanted the ESZ around Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary reduced from 118.59 sq. km down to 88.21 sq. km, the Supreme Court modified its June 2022 order that mandated a uniform 1-km ESZ around all protected forests. Jadab Payeng, a grassroots environmental activist based east of Kaziranga, urged the government to stick to 10 km as the ESZ for the UNESCO World Heritage Site given the frequent human-animal conflicts. Assam Congress president Gaurav Gogoi and environmental groups questioned the proposal against wider ecological protection, warning that a shrinking buffer zone for the 1,302 sq. km Kaziranga Tiger Reserve could harm animal migration routes during annual floods.
He said Kaziranga’s reputation as one of the best protected national parks in the world would suffer otherwise.
