GREAT NICOBAR

• A "Greenfield city" was proposed, including an International Container Transhipment Terminal (ICTT), a greenfield international airport, a power plant, and a township for the personnel who will implement the project.
• The proposed port will allow Great Nicobar to participate in the regional & global maritime economy by becoming a major player in cargo transhipment.
• The port will be controlled by the Indian Navy, while the airport will have dual military-civilian functions.
• Roads, public transport, water supply & waste management facilities & several hotels have been planned to cater to tourists.
• 130 sq km of forests have been sanctioned for diversion & 9.64 lakh trees are likely to be felled.
• Development activities are proposed to commence in the current financial year & the port is expected to be commissioned by 2027-28.
• More than 2.5 lakh direct & indirect jobs are likely to be created on the island throughout development.

• Great Nicobar, the southernmost of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, has an area of 910 sq km.
• The Andaman & Nicobar islands are a cluster of about 836 islands in the eastern Bay of Bengal, the two groups of which are separated by the 150-km wide Ten Degree Channel.
• The Andaman islands lie to the north of the channel & the Nicobar islands to the south.
• Indira point on the southern tip of Great Nicobar Island is India's southernmost point, less than 150km from the northernmost island of the Indonesian archipelago.
• Great Nicobar is home to two national parks, a biosphere reserve & the Shompen & Nicobarese tribal people, ex-servicemen from Punjab, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh who were settled in the 1970s.
• The Shompen are hunter-gatherers who depend on forest & marine resources for sustenance.
• The Nicobarese, who lived along the west coast of the island, were mostly relocated after the 2004 tsunami.
• An estimated 237 Shompen & 1094 Nicobarese now live in a 751 sq km tribal reserve, some 84 sq km of which is proposed to be denotified.
• Approximately 8,000 settlers who live on the island are engaged in agriculture, horticulture & fishing.
• The Great Nicobar Island has tropical wet evergreen forests, mountain ranges reaching almost 650m above sea level & coastal plains.
• Fourteen species of mammals, 71 species of birds, 26 species of reptiles, 10 species of amphibians & 113 species of fish are found on the island, some of which are endangered.
• The leatherback sea turtle is the island's flagship species.

• The island has a lot of tourism potential, but the government's greater goal is to leverage the locational advantage of the island for economic & strategic reasons.
• Great Nicobar is equidistant from Colombo to the southwest, Port Klang & Singapore to the southeast, positioned close to the East-West international shipping corridor.
• The proposed ICTT can potentially become a hub for cargo ships travelling on this route.
• The proposal to develop Great Nicobar was first floated in the 1970s & its importance for national security, and consolidation of the Indian Ocean Region was repeatedly underlined.
• Increasing Chinese assertion in the Bay of Bengal & the Indo-Pacific has added great urgency to this imperative in recent years.

• The proposed massive infrastructure development in an ecologically important, fragile region, including the feeling of almost a million trees, has alarmed environmentalists.
• The loss of tree cover will not only affect the island but will also lead to increased runoff & sediment deposits in the ocean, impacting the coral reefs in the area.
• Environmentalists have flagged the loss of mangroves.
• India has translocated a coral reef from the Gulf of Mannar to the Gulf of Kutch previously.
• The Zoological Survey of India is currently in the process of assessing the relocation sustaining of coral reef.
• The government has said a conservation plan for the leatherback turtle is being put in place.
• According to the government, expediting the project is of paramount security & strategic importance.
• After the grant of stage 1 clearance, all aspects will be weighed before final approval.
• The project site is outside the eco-sensitive zones of Campbell Bay & Galathea National Park.
• The Centre said that the development area is only a small percentage of the area of the island & its forest cover.