A news report or two about the scorching heat and water-guzzling campaigners has become routine when election season comes around. The heat, climate change, or the slew of environmental concerns, however, barely make talking points outside of hyperlocal contexts in election campaigns. The biggest ‘environment story’ in poll-bound Kerala this month has been Congress candidate Chandy Oommen’s campaign that ditched flex boards and hoardings and relied on a hybrid cycle to meet constituents.
But the state’s environmental needs are far more serious and urgent. In just the past decade, unofficial numbers show the state has lost over 1,000 lives to environmental disasters, including floods and landslides. The state also saw drastic sea erosion and witnessed eight of the warmest years ever recorded in the decade between 2012 and 2021. In many of the instances of natural disasters, the state machinery has effectively coordinated relief and rescue.
But, environmental activists in the state say, there is a need for the government’s approach to shift from the reactive to the preventive. “From Forest to Sea: Kerala People's Environmental Charter” elaborates on this. It is a ‘manifesto’ prepared by the Sahyadri Environment Summit 2026 and the Kerala Paristhithi Aikya Vedhi to invite the attention of voters, politicians, and policy makers to the needs and nuances of ecological and climate governance.
At the heart of the manifesto is the argument that Kerala’s many environmental concerns should not be treated in isolation, but seen as interdependent, as the state itself is “an interconnected mosaic of ecosystems linked from ridge to sea.” It demands a development model that will simultaneously “strengthen the ecological systems,” and calls for “a new approach to governance that integrates ecological realities into planning, infrastructure, agriculture, industry and public investment.”
Key proposals
The charter acknowledges Kerala’s surging energy demands in the context of increasing “urbanisation, cooling requirements, digital infrastructure, electric mobility and expanding economic activity.” The state, however, is dependent heavily on electricity bought from fossil-fuel based power plants situated in other states. To sustainably tackle this, Kerala should transition to decentralised “renewable systems, distributed generation, smart grids and energy efficient infrastructure,” the charter argues.
Quarrying and mining is another sensitive issue in Kerala that the manifesto addresses. The state is seeing rapid expansion of the construction sector, but also a "large stock of vacant and underused houses,” the manifesto observes. It says that a responsible “materials policy” will “strictly regulate extraction, reduce demand for virgin materials, and shift the construction sector toward circular, resource-efficient and landscape-sensitive practices.”
Sea erosion and destruction of coastal ecosystems like mangroves and wetlands is another topic that saw several discussions in the past decade, especially in the context of the Vizhinjam port construction in Thiruvananthapuram district. The manifesto calls for “planning, scientific monitoring of shoreline and sediment systems, climate adaptation for tidal flooding and sea incursion, restoration of coastal ecosystems such as mangroves and wetlands, stronger preparedness for maritime pollution events, and explicit recognition of the rights and livelihood security of fishing communities.”
A major recommendation in the charter is for legislation that addresses rights-based, time-bound compensation and resettlement for communities displaced by disasters or living in high-risk zones. Titled the “Kerala Ecological Vulnerability and Climate Risk Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act”, the manifesto demands that the law “ensure secure housing, livelihood restoration, financial recovery and access to health care, education and essential services. It must also recognise the growing reality of climate displacement, where communities can no longer safely remain in repeatedly hazardous areas.”
“From Forest to Sea” also recommends a Land Governance Reform Commission and a State Land Use Policy that will serve as a “practical system of ecological zoning and spatial planning across the ridge-to-sea landscape.”
Besides recommending several other issue-based recommendations, the manifesto also emphasises the need for environmental governance to be durable across political cycles. It proposes a Kerala Environmental Data Dashboard to provide public access to data on pollution, quarry permits, and wetland notifications, ensuring that citizens can hold leadership accountable for measurable ecological outcomes.
On the Madhav Gadgil report
Protection of the Western Ghats is integral to the protection of Kerala’s diverse ecosystems from the high ranges to the coasts, the manifesto acknowledges. “Western Ghats is one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world. Its age and weathering of rocks increases the possibility of slope failures in climate induced heavy rains. Protecting the Western Ghats is therefore not only a conservation priority but also a critical requirement for water security, disaster risk reduction and long-term ecological stability,” it reads.
The report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), led by Madhav Gadgil, had seen widespread debates and opposition in the state. The report had mainly called for the classification of parts of the Western Ghats in six states as Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESA). Of this, almost 10,000 square kilometres of land lie across 131 villages from 12 districts in Kerala. The Union government has not been able to implement this recommendation to date.
“From Forest to Sea” stays clear of addressing how recommendations can be implemented in a way that reconciles the push for development and that for conservation and sustainability, argues professor NC Narayanan in the article “Walking the Razor’s Edge: Politics of Ecological Governance in Kerala” published by the Economic and Political Weekly.
“The structural factors that made the WGEEP politically vulnerable, including the organised opposition of religious institutions, plantation capital, quarry interests and farming communities facing genuine economic difficulty, are not named or engaged. Without confronting these forces, the charter’s call for science-based governance of the Western Ghats risks the same fate as its predecessors,” he writes.
While lauding the charter for highlighting that ecological governance is a political choice that should shape elections, Narayanan points out that it fails to effectively address “the gap between what the ecological situation requires and what the political situation permits.”
