Telecoupled Conservation and Role of Distant Urban Consumption in Shaping Habitat Loss Within Protected Areas

Abstract

Western Ghats, which is a global biodiversity hot spot, is being impacted by land-use change, which
has its beginnings way outside the administrative borders of Protected Areas (PAs) in the Western
Ghats. Although local human activities have frequently been cited as having caused habitat
degradation, this paper uses a telecoupling model to examine how remote urban consumption and
infrastructural pressures by hubs like Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Coimbatore contribute to habitat
degradation within and in the surrounding areas of these PAs. The study examines the socioeconomic
and environmental processes or flows linking the urban centers with the montane forests. Cities have
triggered an evocation of luxury commodities, such as coffee, rubber, and timber, which have resulted
in the transformation of the zones of significant buffers into commercial plantations. Moreover, the
demand for nature-based tourism and second-home real estate has triggered the rapid infrastructure
build-up, which consequently leads to linear encroachment, such as roads and resorts, that dissect the
essential wildlife corridors. Through the combination of multi-temporal satellite images and city
economic indicators, the paper measures the relationship between the capital of the city and loss of
forest cover in major areas such as the Nilgiris biosphere reserve. Results indicate that the
conventional methods of conservation, namely fence-and-fine, are inadequate in countering
telecoupled market forces. The findings demonstrate that distal urban dietary changes and energy
demand determine the level of habitat integrity in the Western Ghats, and this demand enforces large
scale hydroelectric projects in conserved landscapes. In an effort to alleviate these pressures,
conservation policy would need to change towards telecoupled governance, rather than local-centric
management. This involves the introduction of urban-financed Payment of Ecosystem Services (PES),
tougher control of supply chains of Ghats-sourced foods, and obligatory green infrastructure of urban
urban transporting routes. Finally, the sustainability of Western Ghats biodiversity would be
determined by the ability to balance the ecological boundaries of the Protected Areas with the growing
footprint of the urban middle class in India.