The Indian government’s ‘Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island’ project proposes building large-scale infrastructure and expanding tourism in an ecologically sensitive region. The project threatens the Indigenous Shompen and Nicobarese communities, who have lived on the island for millenia. It also risks damaging protected forests and disturbing a fragile ecosystem that includes rare species. While the project promises strategic and economic benefits for India, it raises serious ethical and environmental concerns about the potential destruction of one of the world’s most pristine regions and the infringement on the rights of Indigenous people.
A massive infrastructure and tourism development project was cleared by India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in November 2022. The 750 million Indian rupee (US$8.9 billion) project is planned for Great Nicobar Island, located in the Bay of Bengal, where 250 Shompen and 1000 Nicobarese Indigenous people still live a traditional way of life.
Historically, Great Nicobar Island belonged to the Shompen and Nicobarese Indigenous communities. After periods of colonisation by European powers and by Japan dating back to the 18th century, settlement by India began in 1969 when the Indian government settled 337 ex-servicemen and their families on the island’s southeastern coast. Since the area was designated as a ‘reserve forest’ and ‘tribal reserve’ — never to be used for any other purpose — the government had to formally ‘de-reserve’ about 46 square kilometres of land where the tribes lived.
The tsunami of 2004 caused extensive damage to Great Nicobar Island, leaving 42 of its 72 villages uninhabited as a result of the tsunami and subsequent aid efforts. Most of the affected settlements were coastal Nicobarese villages, whose residents were relocated to shelters in Campbell Bay. The Nicobarese lost most of their coastal forests, coconut plantations, coral reef fishing and piggeries in the tsunami. The survivors have been staying in temporary shelters and are now trying to revive their traditional economy and society. Many still await a return to their old villages or resettlement sites in the coastal zone.
The island is also home to the Shompens. Unlike the Jarawas of the Andaman Islands, who actively defend themselves from any intruder, they generally prefer to remain in seclusion away from modern civilisation. They usually leave or hide upon sighting any outsider venturing close to them. They live independently as foragers in the inland forests and have long-standing relations with the coast-dwelling Nicobarese, largely limited to the bartering of essential articles. Any contact with outsiders coul dbe fatal to this isolated and small community, as they could be exposed to diseases against which they have no immunity. In fact, the Shompens have long been designated as a particularly vulnerable tribal group by the Indian government.
The island has two national parks and one wildlife sanctuary, the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve. Any encroachment on these forests or disturbance to the rights of Indigenous people directly contradicts the policies of the Indian government.
The Tribal Council of Little and Great Nicobar Islands withdrew its no objection certificate for the development in November 2022, which had been issued in August 2022 to indicate the council’s approval for the diversion of reserve forest land. The Council told the Expert Appraisal Committee that they had not been informed that their tribal areas — including specific pre-tsunami villages — would be de-notified or that a port and township accommodation for non-islanders would be built on areas where their traditional settlements used to be.
The project will result in the loss of about 900,000 trees from 15 percent or 130 square kilometres of the prime evergreen tropical forest. This forest is home to 650 species of terrestrial flora and fauna and 330 marine species. Some species, such as the Nicobar Shrew and the Nicobar Megapode, are found only in this area.
Twelve to 20 hectares of valuable mangrove forest will also be replaced by an international cargo terminal, an airport, gas and solar power plants and two coastal cities — an eco-tourism hub and a residential township. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation and the NITI Aayog have estimated that about 350,000 people will inhabit the island by 2050. This is an increase of 4000 per cent from the present population of Great Nicobar Island.
A wildlife sanctuary in Galathia has already been de-notified, leaving no buffer zone for the Galathia National Park where four Shompen bands live. Given the area’s location in an active plate tectonic zone, its scarcity of fresh water and limited capacity for generating green power, this raises serious questions about the project’s sustainability.
The Indian government’s expert appraisal committee recommended that the project be given clearance under both the Environmental Protection Act of 1985 and the Coastal Regulation Zone notification of 1991, despite several controversies and procedural lapses in the environmental impact assessment report. The National Green Tribunal, India’s apex environmental court, ruled that it would not ‘interfere’ with the clearances.
To deal with the existing protective laws such as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation of 1956, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act of 2006 and the Shompen Policy of 2015, the NITI Aayog used terms such as de-notification, deregulation, de-reservation and diversion strategies to circumvent these laws. But this project in one of the world’s most pristine regions raises critical concerns about who is going to benefit from this development.
The Indian government will certainly gain strategic benefits from having a large port in the Bay of Bengal, possibly responding to the growing presence of foreign superpowers in the Indian Ocean region. But the undisturbed and delicate ecological harmony of the island, where some of the oldest Indigenous cultures remain intact, must remain a ‘no-go zone’ for development. The project would put the lives of the Shompen and the Nicobarese, as well as a huge amount of national wealth, at significant risk.