Team Herald
VASCO: Raising its strong objections to the draft Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification 2018, the National Fishworkers’ Forum (NFF) on Wednesday said it will not provide environmental protection or uphold traditional fishers’ rights but will in fact eliminate fish workers from the coast and rivers.
“On April 18, 2018, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) published a draft CRZ notification, 2018 giving a 60-day period for public comments. The NFF strongly opposes the same and is currently engaged in a national consultative process for providing comments on this draft from the perspective of small scale fishers. We also want to question the government’s motives to replace the CRZ notification, 2011 when it is not yet implemented in its entirety,” NFF Chairperson Narendra Patil said.
Olencio Simoes, NFF vice chairperson said, “In light of the incumbent government’s whole-hearted embracing of the Blue Economy through its flagship Sagarmala programme, the NFF is well aware that this draft is intended to boost the programme. This is in addition to the “unlawful and unconstitutional “nationalisation of 111 rivers, which is in gross violation of United Nations Declaration on the rights of indigenous people.”
“Further, the demands of that programme require ports and other infrastructures to be constructed on the coastline. If in 2014, the port-led Sagarmala programme seemed like an aggregator of projects then by 2018, sweeping legislative and bureaucratic changes indicate that the country’s economic model is being overhauled. This draft notification is an indication that if the coastlines are to act as the launch pads of a new India, then they must be vacated of their traditional fish worker inhabitants and their customary rights,” Simoes informed.
He said NFF has called for a National Consultation on the issue on May 15, 2018 in Mumbai, with the aim to recreate the large-scale mobilisation against the Coastal Zone Management notification. “The NFF has also declared June 5, 2018 as a National Action Day against the draft CRZ, 2018. Our demands on this day of action are to recognise the inalienable traditional and customary rights of fish workers over coastal lands and waters and to enact a national legislation for conservation of coastal and marine biodiversity that inter alia protects traditional fish workers’ preferential access and historic use to coastal and marine resources,” Simoes added.
