A seminar on climate change and man-made disasters that concluded here on Tuesday stressed the need for conserving the remaining patches of forest in the State.
The programme was organised by the Wayanad Prakruthi Samrakshana Samiti as part of the third anniversary of Puthumala and Kavalappara landslips. The undesirable and unscientific changes in the utilisation of land in ecologically fragile areas were the major reasons behind the recent disasters in the district, P.U. Das, former District Soil Conservation Officer, said.
The hill district, spread over 3.5 lakh hectares, was gifted with 3,500 km of streams, rivulets and rivers but nearly 50% of waterbodies had vanished owing to anthropogenic activities in the past few decades, Mr. Das said.
Several shopping malls, convention centres, and movie theatres were constructed after filling mud at the origin of rivers and wetlands, he said. “Most landslips occurred in converted land. Monocrop cultivation after destroying evergreen forests and the construction of roads and resorts in ecologically sensitive areas also caused landslips and mudslips,” he added.
Drafting long-term master plans for grama panchayats on the slopes of the Western Ghats was the need of the hour, C.K. Vishnudas, environmentalist and Director of the Hume centre for Ecology and Wildlife Biology, said.
Activities such as land utilisation, construction of huge buildings, and cultivation of crops should be based on the master plan, Mr. Vishnudas said. Weather forecasting systems should be set up in local bodies to alert the public on time, he said.
Environmentalist and senior lawyer P. Chathukkutty presided.
