# Ajayan | Scientists and experts have raised alarm over the Central Government’s ambitious Rs 92,000-crore Great Nicobar project, warning of grave ecological and human costs. They cite the diversion of protected rainforests, the looming displacement of indigenous communities and the project’s opaque approval process as signs of deeply flawed planning - both economically and environmentally.
From Padma awardees Ramachandra Guha and Romulus Whitaker to scientists at TISS, BNHS, ANTRI and the National Institute of Advanced Studies, joined by ecologists, lawyers and former bureaucrats, a coalition of experts very recently petitioned Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav for a thorough review of the Great Nicobar project. They warn that vital scientific and economic concerns remain unresolved, or worse, willfully ignored. They demand a development approach that respects ecological balance while protecting the rights and livelihoods of the island’s indigenous peoples.
Branded a ‘strategic’ venture, experts see through the veil; arguing that invoking national security to silence scrutiny is disingenuous. The military-civilian airport occupies a mere 5 per cent of the site; the remaining 160 sq km - 130 of dense rainforest and nearly 3 reclaimed from the sea - serve a commercial transshipment agenda. Ironically, much of the proposed International Container Transshipment Terminal sits on Navy land, raising fears the project may become a liability rather than an asset. Worse still, plans for a sprawling township covering over 80 per cent of the area threaten to uproot the island’s identity, swelling its population from 8,000 to 3.5 lakh and transforming both its landscape and soul.
The claim that only 1.82 per cent of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands’ forests will be diverted may be mathematically sound, but it conceals a harsher reality - nearly 15 per cent of Great Nicobar’s forests will vanish. These woodlands span two UNESCO-recognised biodiversity hotspots, the Indo-Burma and Nicobar–Sunda regions, home to a million rainforest trees, the island’s last old-growth canopies, and the ancestral homelands of the Shompen and Great Nicobarese peoples.
Incidentally, the proposed ICTT faces stiff competition from a terminal in Indonesia’s Sabang, just 190 km away, built in collaboration with India. Meanwhile, Great Nicobar braces for irreversible upheaval: vast forest clearances, altered landscapes and cultural displacement. Still scarred by the 2004 tsunami and displaced in their own homeland, the islanders now confront a new wave - this time in the name of “development”. Experts ask: does the ancient wisdom of a people who have lived in harmony with nature for ages hold no value in the nation’s progress vision?
They argue the project violates indigenous rights protected under the Forest Rights Act. Without consent or consultation, the administration denotified Galathea Wildlife Sanctuary and declared three new ones - bypassing any ecological assessment. Worse, the tribal affairs committee lacks anthropologists familiar with the Shompen or Nicobarese peoples and has not met since its inception in 2022–23. Appeals from Nicobarese Tribal Council members, they say, have fallen on deaf ears.
Scientists have slammed the project’s conservation and management plans as “illogical, unscientific and baseless.” Proposals to translocate 20,000 coral colonies and crocodiles, cage the endangered Nicobar megapode, and downplay threats to leatherback turtles and endemic birds, they argue, mock ecological reason and scientific integrity alike.
Worse, the very institutions that drafted the mitigation plans are now entrusted with monitoring them - a glaring conflict of interest. With every key agency answerable to the same ministry, critics warn that independence, transparency and scientific rigour have been sacrificed, insulating the project from scrutiny and public accountability.
