FPJ Dialogue: Activist Vidushi Kala Slams Nod To Cut 45,000 Mangroves For Versova-Bhayandar Link Road Project, Warns Of Flooding Risk And Ecological Damage

Mumbai, April 8: If thousands of Mumbai’s mangroves are cut, it is undisputed that there will be serious ecological effects, and it is not clear if the courts have applied their mind while approving the massive cutting of over 45,000 for the Versova-Bhayandar Link Road (VBLR), said Vidushi Kala, an ecofeminist, a lawyer, and active member of the ‘Save Mumbai, Save Mangroves’ group.

Kala visited the Free Press Journal office on Wednesday for an interaction on environmental conservation and the group's next step to save mangroves in Mumbai. Excerpts.

More than 45,000 mangroves will be cut for the VBLR. Isn't the number huge?

The question itself is: how do you get the 45,000 figure? On 103 hectares of land, the number of mangrove trees will be much higher. What is the substantial reason to destroy this massive green cover? It must be a great economic benefit, but the sad truth is that it is not. There is no great economic benefit in cutting down the ecology that has been there for hundreds of years for a road. That is absurd.

The Supreme Court recently upheld the Bombay High Court order, permitting the cutting of the mangroves. Was there anything fundamentally wrong in the presentation of the argument of the PIL? Why did the petitioners lose this case?

I believe there is a significant lag in how the matter is presented in court. The court has not been able to have a clear, competent view of the matter. Whatever the BMC has written on paper, the court has accepted. We don’t know whether the court has fully applied its mind. We will only understand it when we take the matter to the court again.

Are you filing a review petition in the Supreme Court?

It may not be a review petition, as we may not have sufficient scope. We are looking at other legal avenues. This is an open matter, and the court has said it will look at it for over 10 years. The grounds for contempt are still open.

As the review petition is most likely to go to the same bench, how many hopes do you have of justice?

The hope for justice will be bleak. We are not asking for the project to stop; we are realists. We are expecting the courts to give us an option to consider an alternative plan. Certain changes in the alignments can save some mangroves. We are pro-survival; we are not anti-development.

Your group has been warning that if this large number of mangrove trees is cut down, there will be massive flooding during the monsoon in parts of the western suburbs. How true are these fears?

The flooding is undisputed, as the mangroves are the first line of defence against it. We already see sea levels rising, and by 2040, there will be a 10-15% rise in sea level. The locations where the mangroves are to be cut for VBLR are right next to residential areas. We cannot have this level of delusion that flooding won’t increase, and that people will not suffer. We do not need experts to explain this.

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The BMC claims that compensatory plantations will be done in the Chandrapur and Palghar districts. What do you have to say on this afforestation?

That is essentially what we want to bring to the court’s notice. How can you remove trees from a coastline and plant them kilometres away? There have been several studies published that in India, the survival rate of compensatory afforestation is 50%. In most cases, it will fail without continued effort. Our fight doesn’t stop at saving mangroves, but also at keeping track of the efforts to survive compensatory afforestation undertaken by the authorities.

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