Can we save our Green Goa?
Paul Fernandes,
TNN Mar 7, 2013, 07.29AM IST
Goa is often compared to a multi-faceted jewel, but its beauty and natural assets have become the cause of mindless exploitation, and the loot and plunder of its resources is heading towards the tipping point.
Tiny and fragile, more than 80% of Goa's geographical area has been classified as eco-sensitive in the regional plan (RP) 2021. Yet its forests, hills, rivers and water bodies are under a siege of mindboggling violations from various lobbies.
The future seems bleak and difficult for the state and its people, as the administrative machinery seems ineffective in curbing and controlling the destruction, and only a handful of its citizens are trying to stop it.
Three-pronged threat
The extractive industries, especially iron ore mining, construction activity and partly nature's own force on the coast are posing a threat to Goa's physical and visual integrity.
Famed for its picture-postcard views with verdant hills and blue rivers, sun-kissed beaches with swaying palms, churches and temples peeking from the greenery, Goa has already been declared as a lost cause by some of its citizens and admirers from elsewhere.
The lush green views of hills are now marred by sights of huge red gashes of mining pits and towering concrete blocks of buildings. The list of the state's problems is quite long and worrisome, but iron ore mining, construction and industrial activities dominate the barrage of violations.
Mining's deep & deadly scars
The damaging impact of iron ore mining is bigger than other factors. Extraction of iron ore and manganese involves cutting of hills and its slopes to later expanding the mining into pits.
Pumping out water from the pits lowers the water table in the area; the dumps of rejects are often located close to rivers; silt enters the fields and water bodies, springs and plantations; and most mines have plunged below the water table. Also, huge tracts of forests have been diverted for mining and dumping rejection.
The cumulative effect of degradation of land, dust pollution, contamination of groundwater and other water sources and damage to flora and fauna is unthinkable. Yet, some of the social and environmental costs of several decades of mining have hardly been assessed.
Home destroyed for a second home
After mining, the major damage to the state's fragile environment has come from industrial and construction activities. Large tracts of green areas are being developed for housing.
The state shot into prominence as a tourism destination and the mind-boggling rush to cater to outsiders' demands for holiday homes has triggered a frenzy of construction activity.
The scarcity of land has shifted the attention to hill slopes, as they are being shaved and slaughtered for more housing. Sewage and garbage management is hardly considered, but approvals are issued in quick time for building.
A coastline under threat
A boom in tourism activity has led to violations of the coastal regulation zone (CRZ) notifications, earlier of 1991 and now of 2011. More than 8,000 violations were recorded after a writ petition was filed in the high court of Bombay at Goa. Many of them are yet to be removed, but more have sprouted on Goa's coastline in flagrant violation of the new 2011 regime.
Like concrete for tree cover
Industrial activity has destroyed plateaus and water sources even in adjacent villages.
Plateaus are known to harbour endemic biodiversity, but many species may have been wiped out even before experts studied their existence.
Goa was one of the few states in the country with a higher forest cover. But mining and other activities have taken a heavy toll on the green cover. The forest department has been slow in recording private forest cover, which is estimated to be about 200 sq km, but hardly 67 sq km has been identified.
But the lack of political will to provide surveyors to demarcate the forest areas and neglect by the forest department in excluding some identified areas means huge tracts of private forest land has lapsed into the ambit of the construction lobby. There are also several problems in wildlife sanctuaries.
Riverbanks robbed of prized sand
The CRZ 2011 notification outlawed sand mining because of its destructive impacts on estuarine ecology. But high demand for the commonly used aggregate for construction activity has only led to rampant and unscientific extraction of river sand. But in a climb down, the union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) allowed regulated extraction by traditional methods around November 2011. But the government appointed panels to monitor the activity only recently.
The ravaging of riverbeds continues, though officials conducted a few raids at some spots, initiating action against illegal activities. The activity has moved up to newer areas, and even upstream near wildlife sanctuaries in the hinterland.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-03-07/goa/37530725_1_iron-ore-water-bodies-dust-pollution
