From afterthought to blueprint: Making wildlife-friendly linear infrastructure a design requirement, not post-hoc mitigation measures

Developing economies like India are pushing for aggressive linear transportation infrastructure (LTI) growth as a means to achieve economic and social development. Among LTI, roads and railway lines are the prime focus of infrastructure growth plans. Often, the focal project implementation areas, especially remote and rural reaches of the country, are near biodiversity-rich forests and wildlife corridors, and are impacted in various ways during the construction and operation of these projects. In its present form, LTI development planning in India occurs in isolation, with biodiversity and environmental protection measures considered much later in the planning stage. This process leaves little scope for incorporating appropriate environment and wildlife-friendly measures into LTI projects passing through ecologically sensitive habitats, with scarce options to mitigate the impacts of such projects. Further, considering the lack of inclusion of mitigation costs at the planning stage, delayed imposition of such costs on developers leads to inflation of budgets and delayed project implementation. Overall, the present model of LTI planning in India does not satisfy either financial viability, sustainability, or conservation objectives. We assert that LTI planning through sensitive landscapes should include wildlife-friendly measures as a design requirement, rather than mitigation measures. These measures ought to be part of LTI planning and costing at the inceptive stages as a standard procedure. This can be made possible through early engagement with conservation agencies to pre-emptively evaluate alternatives, and, if unavoidable, integrate environment and wildlife-friendly measures into infrastructure design and costs. Such a framework would be beneficial from the project developers’ perspective as it would lead to easier environmental clearances, realistic project budgets, and completion timelines. More importantly, it would ensure that all possible options have been explored to avoid and minimise impacts to biodiversity. Consequently, all unavoidable infrastructure projects in biodiversity-rich or sensitive landscapes must include provisions for environment and wildlife-friendly components in their design, which are built into project costs.