Issue - Development vs Ecology "Ken Betwa Project"

Context

• Ken-Betwa interlinking will help irrigate 600,000 hectares of land and provide drinking water to 1.34 million in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, but the ecological impact of the project may be disastrous.

The Ken-Betwa link project

• The Ken-Betwa link project envisages diversion of surplus waters of Ken basin to water deficit Betwa basin.
• The quantity of water proposed to be diverted from Ken basin, after considering in basin demands and downstream commitments earmarked for providing irrigation in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, is 1020 Mm3 .
• This link canal will provide irrigation to water short areas of upper Betwa basin of Madhya Pradesh by way of substitution and also to enroute areas of Madhya Pradesh & Uttar Pradesh.
• The command envisaged in the earlier proposed Ken Multipurpose Project (KMPP) by Madhya Pradesh State Government is also to be irrigated from this project.
• It is the first-ever inter-State river linking project since India’s independence

Conflict

• The Union Water Resources Ministry has told the Union Environment Ministry that many measures are in place to ensure that territories and habitats of tigers and vultures in the region are not damaged.
• The Ministry was responding to a report filed on Monday by wildlife experts, constituted by the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL), who warned of dangers to wildlife resident in the core region of the Panna tiger reserve.
• NBWL clearance is necessary for the go-ahead and subsequent commissioning of the Rs 9,000-crore project that proposes to irrigate the drought-ravaged Bundelkhand region.

The problem

• The project involves building the 288-metre Daudhan dam, and transfer of surplus water from the Ken river basin to the Betwa basin.
• This will submerge nearly 4,141 hectares of the Panna tiger reserve — held as model of tiger conservation after its numbers fell from 35 in 2006 to zero in 2009, and rose again to at least 18 after seven years of conservation.
• On the contrary, water that will result in the region may lead to new water bodies that will draw herbivores and thus prey and carcasses for the tiger and the vultures.

Any solution offered

• The Madhya Pradesh government had promised 8,000 hectares of alternate forest land as compensation and much of it — currently barren — would be replenished with vegetation that had once existed in the region, the source added.

Experts’ opinion

• Wildlife experts says the project will not channel water to drought prone regions of Bundelkhand.
• They have  warned of the dangers to the ecology and animal life due to the proposed Ken-Betwa project.
• Apart from threats to the tiger habitat, there are also threats to gharial, hyenas and vultures that live within the sanctuary.