KOLKATA: One of India’s most critical environmental habitats — the Sundarbans in West Bengal — could soon be overrun by tourists. Said to be the largest mangrove forest in the world, the Sundarbans form a world heritage site that’s home to the Bengal tiger and various endangered species besides forming a natural barrier to the waters of the Bay of Bengal. But a plan drawn up by the Mamata Banerjee government will soon see the building of roads, hotels and other tourism infrastructure in the area.The importance of preserving mangroves as a safeguard was among the key learnings of the floods that devastated Mumbai in 2005. With much of them paved over, there was little to stop the water from inundating vast areas of India’s commercial capital, causing death and destruction. To be sure, the West Bengal administration says it will ensure that the ecosystem is preserved. The state tourism department, which will spend about Rs 60 crore to develop infrastructure, has been given 90 acres in Jharkhali, one of the main entry points to the Sundarbans, for ecotourism development.“We are building bridges to join the creeks and also constructing roads in the 90 acres given to us,” said AR Bardhan, principal secretary, tourism. M&M’s Club Mahindra time-share unit will invest.`50 crore to build a resort in the area in the first phase, while Vivada Cruises is spending .`35 crore to add six small vessels of two-four bedroom capacity to their existing Sundarbans cruise holiday package options.Both companies said they will be scrupulous about protecting the ecosystem.“This will be Club Mahindra’s first resort in West Bengal and will add to its existing bouquet of 41 resorts in India and abroad,” said Kavinder Singh, managing director and CEO, Club Mahindra. “The Sundarbans is the largest delta in the world and boasts of splendid wildlife, adding to the bouquet of unique experiences we offer our 1,78,000 members.”Vivada said it has been extra careful about green concerns.“We are the only cruise that has got an environment impact assessment done and we also don’t use fresh water from the area. We carry it from the city and to help promote employment, we also run a communitybased project in one of the islands called Bali where people who have been poachers before are now engaged in tourism activities,” said Sushila Ramamurty, executive director, Vivada Inland Waterways.The chief minister wants to make sure everybody can afford to visit the mangroves. To this end, the tourism department floated a tender seeking the establishment of a budget hotel on seven acres in Jharkhali“Techno India Group has won the bid and is putting up a budget accommodation spending close to Rs 40 crore in the next six months,” said Bardhan. The tourism department will also float tenders for another 40 acres in the coming months.Environmentalist Bittu Sahgal pointed out advantages and drawbacks of tourism in such a region.“Tourism can be a conservation tool if it part-finances wildlife protection and accepts local communities as partners, not just menial employees,” he said. “Every destination has its unique personality, limitations, and imperatives. Five-starstyle cement constructions, roads, bridges, generator noise, pollution and lights would adversely affect the fragile nocturnal ecology of the Sundarban mangrove ecosystem, and ruin the visitor experience.”Sahgal added that Vivada should work with smaller boats and not seek building of large jetties. Club Mahindra should take a cue from South Africa and ensure its facilities meld into the surroundings, not replicate land-based infrastructure, Sahgal said. “Friedensreich Hundertwasser got it right when he said, ‘You are a guest of nature... behave’,” he said.The Sundarbans cover 4,200 sq km, comprising 102 islands and 54 human settlements. The mangrove forests, according to a camera trap exercise by the West Bengal forest department in partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) in 2013, are home to 102 Bengal tigers. The area is also the habitat of endangered species such as fishing cats, estuarine crocodiles and the Batagur baska or terrapin, the last found only in India.Meanwhile, the east zone bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) this month began suo motu proceedings into the degradation of the Sundarbans and appointed green activist Subhas Datta as amicus curiae. Datta had submitted a detailed report to the tribunal that includes some of the worries about degradation in the name of development.“Large number of tourists visit different parts of the Sundarbans every year. Activities of the tourists create huge pollution load in the eco-sensitive zones,” he said. He also referred specifically to the visit of the chief minister to the Sundarbans with a team of industrialists to develop ecotourism in the region, pointing out that there were strict rules about where development could take place.“Other than the national park, sanctuary, tiger reserve areas (and) biosphere reserve, (the) Sundarban mangrove areas outside the declared forest are also critically vulnerable coastal areas coming under CRZ-1 (Coastal Regulation Zone-1) where permission cannot be given for developmental activities like tourism,” Datta’s report said.He also expressed concern in general about protecting the area.“For this critically vulnerable coastal area, which is under Coastal Regulation Zone-1, there is no master plan for conservation. Instead of conserving this world heritage and proposed Ramsar site, several piecemeal, short-term, unplanned and unwarranted developmental activities have been carried out by the Sundarban Development Authority, Sundarban Development Board and others merely for political or financial gains. It is hard to conceive of any development in the Sundarbans by ignoring conservation and preservation aspects,” Datta said.Datta’s report also said that the large number of motorboats already plying in the Sundarbans are spewing heavy fumes from their old, inefficient engines that run on adulterated fuel. According to Pradeep Vyas, director of the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve, the proposed tourism projects comply with the Environmental Protection Act but a revision of the norms is in order.“The new proposal in process will mark a 2 km (belt) around the forest range as an eco-sensitive zone and there will be two categories under it—one where tourism cannot be permitted, while the other would permit tourism but with restrictions,” said Vyas. These will include reducing capacity of vessels that carry tourists and waste management rules.