North East   

EIA of Khonoma Green Village Project, Nagaland

Khonoma, a small village at an altitude of 1200 m amsl, situated 21 km west of Kohima, the capital town of Nagaland, is a historical village known for its leadership, generating innovative ideas and possessing traditional wisdom and skills in a range of disciplines such as jhum cultivation through alder tree, irrigation and water harvesting, land, water and other natural resource management, arts and crafts, stone cutting etc. Through CEE’s initiatives that it started way back in 1995 and followed up continuously through a range of EE programmes, Khonoma has declared a big portion of their forest area as Khonoma Nature Conservation & Tragopan Sanctuary (KNCTS). In Nagaland and other tribal areas of the northeast the land belongs to the community. The Nagas who are known for their hunting instinct and eating anything that crawls, declaration of KNCTS is praiseworthy step. Besides KNCTS, a community managed sanctuary; Khonoma has banned hunting in all its forest areas and taken various measures for the protection of environment. There are very wise but strict rules and punishments for firewood, timber and other NTFP collection. By having KNCTS the village has created an example and shown the way to the World towards sustainable development.

KNCTS is now well-known and getting support from various agencies. North Eastern Council (NEC) and some other national and international agencies have come forward to support and scale up KNCTS. Recently the Union Ministry of Tourism and Culture, through the Nagaland State Department of Tourism has sanctioned a “Khonoma Green Village Project” (KGVP) for the development of Ecotourism Park at Community Reserved Forest and KNCTS. KGVP is the first project of its kind and when done, Khonoma will become the first GREEN VILLAGE in the country.

However, before taking the project into action, sincere efforts are being put to do an extensive Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) so that the tourism does not lead to environmental degradation as has happened at many places elsewhere. CEE Himalaya with two more experts and a Bangalore based company Biodiversity Conservation (India) Ltd form the team appointed by the State Tourism Department for doing the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) study of the project.

The EIA has been completed and final report has been submitted. CEE Himalaya, in addition, has also developed a tourist brochure for village Khonoma.