Veteran ecologist, Madhav Gadgil, passes away in Pune after brief illness

Gadgil in many ways shaped grassroots environmentalism in India.

New Delhi: Veteran ecologist, Madhav Gadgil (83), known for his seminal work on the Western Ghats and a bottom up approach to environmental conservation passed away in Pune on Wednesday night after a brief illness.

Veteran ecologist Madhav Gadgil

"I am very sorry to share the sad news that my father, Madhav Gadgil, passed away late last night in Pune after a brief illness," said Siddhartha Gadgil in a brief statement.

Gadgil in many ways shaped grassroots environmentalism in India. He is also known for correctly warning that building infrastructure and development projects in the Western Ghats would lead to disastrous consequences. Gadgil’s landmark work, dubbed the Gadgil Report, called for the protection of India’s ecologically fragile Western Ghats mountain range in the face of growing threats from industry and the climate crisis.

Written in 2011, the report, whose recommendations are yet to be implemented, was prescient about the fallout of the ravaging of the mountain range.

Gadgil was named one of the six ‘Champions of the Earth’ for 2024 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “In a scientific career that has spanned six decades – taking him from the halls of Harvard University to the upper echelons of India’s government – Gadgil has always considered himself a “people’s scientist,” the UNEP statement had said.

In 2021, in an interview to HT, Gadgil had said: “It is not unprecedented. In the Western Ghats, such disasters have been happening frequently in the past few years. In the Himalayas, we have seen instances of such flooding over the past 50 years. The Chipko agitation in Uttarakhand in 1972 was partly triggered by flooding in the Alaknanda because of cutting of trees and hill slopes."

"These activities have only increased over the years. The Himalayas are even more fragile compared to the Western Ghats because they were created out of sediments from the sea during the collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates. The Himalayan soil is susceptible to landslides and erosion. The Western Ghats, on the other hand, were created out of volcanic rocks.”

His research helped to protect marginalised people, promote the community-driven conservation of ecosystems, from forests to wetlands, and influence policymaking at the highest level. Of the seven books and at least 225 scientific papers he has written, “I am very happy and satisfied,” he said to HT over phone. “I have been talking since morning.”

“I hope that people will get organised, they will build pressure, our recommendations are in the interest of the larger mass of people in the country. This is more and more possible in the era of communication,” he told HT.

“I have the satisfaction that as a scientist, empathetic to the people, I have been able to do various things which have helped in changing the direction of what is happening. I’m a durable optimist – and hopeful that this progress will continue to gather pace,” Gadgil told UNEP..

Gadgil chaired the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel in 2011. It recommended that 75% of the 129,037 sq km area of the Western Ghats be declared environmentally sensitive because of its dense forests and the presence of a large number of endemic species. This was controversial, with many states deeming it too restrictive.

Three years later, a second panel, headed by rocket scientist K Kasturirangan, scaled down the area to 50%. The Kasturirangan report’s recommendations were further diluted, and four draft notifications have since been issued.

The eco-sensitive areas along the Western Ghats are yet to be notified by the Centre, 15 years since the first such demarcation was recommended by a panel led by eminent ecologist Madhav Gadgil in 2011. Among the areas recommended for such demarcation by the panel was that in Kerala’s Wayanad where over 250 persons were killed in landslides in 2024.

According to Penguin which published Gadgil’s autobiography titled “A Walk Up The Hill Living With People And Nature” in 2023 says Gadgil was born in 1942 amid the hills of Western Ghats and, fascinated by its rich natural and cultural heritage, decided, while still a high school student, to become a field ecologist-cum-anthropologist. He was educated in Pune, Mumbai and Harvard University, where he did a doctoral thesis in mathematical ecology and won the IBM Computer Center Fellowship.

For 31 years he was on the faculty of Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, where he established the Centre for Ecological Sciences and engaged in basic as well as applied research in collaboration with tribals, farmers, herders and fisherfolk. He was involved in drafting India’s Biological Diversity Act and has chaired the Science and Technology Advisory Panel of Global Environment Facility and the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel.

Gadgil was born in Pune in 1942. Influenced by his birdwatcher father, he learnt to recognize birds from their pictures even before he could read. He was an unusual combination of a person fascinated by the diversity of the natural world, of the landscapes and the life they support, as well as the diversity of cultures and lifestyles of the people firmly rooted to India’s soil. He has dedicated himself to intellectual pursuits ranging over mathematics, natural and social sciences, history and public policy.

Gadgil’s wife and noted monsoon scientist, Sulochana Gadgil had passed away in July last year.