Another example of blinkered developmental vision is the proposed new international airport at Panvel, Navi Mumbai. This airport will be built on 141 hectares of reserved forest and 110 acres of mangroves. Proposed in 1997, the airport project got environmental clearance from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in 2010, through exemptions facilitated by amendments in the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification and an erroneous environmental impact assessment report (Chauhan et al 2016: 52). Apart from endangering the wetlands and diverting two river channels of Ulwe and Ghadi, the airport will also disturb the Karnala Bird Sanctuary, home to 147 varieties of resident and 37 species of migratory birds (Menon 2013). The airport will disrupt the mudflats of Navi Mumbai, which act as a sponge, protecting the area from flooding by retaining excess water during the monsoon. The repercussions were already visible in 2018, with flooding in the adjacent low-lying areas. The construction of two parallel airport runways uses stones and soil from the nearby Ulwe hill, exacerbating the instability of the surrounding terrain. Despite assurances of building a 245-hectare compensatory mangrove park, the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), which is implementing the project, has still not been able to decide the location of the park. The project will also displace 3,500 families to make way for the airport.
https://www.epw.in/journal/2019/9/commentary/mumbais-blinkered-vision-development.html