Summary:
One of my students has done a thesis on intense rainfall events in Kerala... Ecologist Madhav Gadgil, who headed the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), claimed on Saturday that the floods and landslides in Kerala is also a man-made disaster as illegal constructions on river beds and unauthorised stone quarrying contributed to the calamity. The government-constituted WGEEP, in its 2011 report, had recommended that several areas in Kerala which come under the Western Ghats should be classified as ecologically sensitive. While the magnitude of rainfall witnessed in Kerala this season was not exactly unprecedented, the flooding seen this time was never experienced before, Gadgil told PTI here. Implementing the report means government stopping flouting our own laws and government stopping suppression of our own people,” Gadgil said..