This report by Dakshin Foundation deals with the hazards and setbacks in coastal legislation. Laws pertaining to specific ecosystems and their use made an appearance over the last three decades and the law pertaining to coastal spaces – the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification, 1991 specifically decides what people can and cannot do on the coastal stretches of the country. This mainly includes where people can live, where establishments can be set up and the nature of activities permissible on the coast.
The basis for each of these regulations is ascribed to certain concerns, principles and concepts and coastal management has seen several shifts and changes in these. The concern around ‘vulnerability’ has seen the emergence of ideas and responses such as introducing ‘setbacks’ for development and establishing ‘hazard lines’.
The CRZ, 1991 became a subject of intense public debate – beginning as concerns around the massive rehabilitation efforts in the southern Indian states, but thereafter focusing on the inconspicuous reconstructing fragility process of coastal legislation reform that the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) had initiated in July 2004, just prior to the tsunami.
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