With Goans staring at the huge debt the government has placed on our economy, revival is a big challenge. The Coronavirus variant has taught us Goans that saving lives of people is an essential duty of the government. Thus our lives and livelihood are both very important. This government of Goa has failed the common Goan. Precious lives of my fellow Goans have been lost for eternity and we, the people of Goa, are fully responsible for the disaster for allowing faulty standard operating procedures imposed upon us. In Goa we lost both, lives and livelihood. The last government wrongly concentrated on livelihoods and ignored the fact that only when Goans are alive, livelihoods will automatically come.
We Goans have to be upfront and forthright to realise that Mother Goa is the best place on Earth and we must sacrifice and usher a revolution to pledge on World Biodiversity day on May 22 that we will all endeavour to protect and scale up the quality of our biodiversity, which has sustained us Goans for 10,000 years of Goan heritage, culture and economy. As a ground scientist and a passionate researcher, I can assert firmly that Goa actually deserves an institute of virology. It was IIT in the past and respirators during Covid times. We know pushing a IIT campus on the Goans was to benefit from the real estate and not quality education. Look at the power project passing through Mollem sanctuary. The clearance for this project was given by our ‘Wildlife Warden’ of Goa Forest Department is a tragic paradox. What is a tragedy and an inimical disaster for the Goan ecosystem and biodiversity is the confidence displaced by those forest officials in asserting and I quote, “Any interaction with Karnataka through road or rail or transmission line has to be through sanctuary only. Since we have declared it as a sanctuary, it should not become detrimental for further development.”
If you enjoyed reading this article, you can help support our journalism by adding OHeraldo as a preferred source.
It is disgusting that this vital statement was accepted by the Goan society on its face value. It is disappointing Goa does need to have any scientific qualified journalists in the reporting as well as in the editorial teams. Often reporters blindly swallow the statements of these IAS officials and those from the Forest Department as truths. We must not grudge the fact that our journalists who are ill equipped and underqualified to counter and question the ‘I Agree Sir’ (IAS) officials, who too do the biddings for the politicians, who govern Goa.
We need to be proactive. Our actions must speak louder than our tunes and tones. Mother Goa needs sweat and blood to enable us to keep our beautiful land from degradation and plunder. Forests and wildlife in Goa are dwindling. By allowing pseudo developmental projects in Goa, we are inviting pestilence and disease to usher in and catalyse pandemic. Doesn’t Covid-19, swine flu, bird flu and the host of Zoonotic diseases in Goa particularly where monkey borne viruses are killing our population. Taking the destruction of sanctuary at Mollem as a focal talking point in this essay, I wish to assert that all these developmental projects in Goa mentioned earlier, be it IIT, Mopa airport, Sagarmala and the MPT coal handling projects and Mormugao Port Authority projects, centred around destruction of renewable energy resources. We have to be aware, that in the garb of nationalism, we have destroyed our natural resources. Isn’t it absurd that we show our willingness to allow Goa as a corridor to import foreign coal and allow its transport across salubrious and tranquil Goan villages, thus putting to risk the respiratory health of our indigenous population. We destroy our resources bestowed on to us by Mother Nature by accepting destructive developmental projects. The Captain of Ports knows well that the eco-sensitivity of Mandovi River basin has been subjected to ecological destruction by a company drilling 40 metres deep, extracting fish nutrients and detritus and filling up concrete with volume of over 15 cubic metres or over 15 tonnes in weight of each pier. With over 280 pilings and piers, the Panjim port would become a benthic disaster of solid iron and concrete blocks which could disturb the fish nurseries as well as coastal biodiversity as nutrients would be completely depleted for fish.
Thus the terminal building which is steadily coming up on the jetty has encroached 60 metres into the river, from its original banks thus making traditional fishing extinct. Those who are in their seventies know as to how poor fisherfolk used to pick up shellfish, oysters, clams and crabs as a part of their daily routine.
There are many like me, who used to go fishing on the jetty and were able to net reef cod, what we termed as Indian salmons and mullets, etc. The establishment of MPT authority would be a disaster for our biodiversity as well as our ecosystem in our Mandovi basin.
Today, we can only get fish breeding in polluted waters like the catfish and tilapias. As mangroves are getting razed in the garb of real estate development, we find detrital matter and the fish food and nurseries being obliterated and extinct. Thus it is not concrete jungles that are threatened by humans but our estuarine, coastal and marine fauna and flora is losing its biodiversity and marine economic value but also our understanding of marine resources. Amusing Goans prefer to go across the seven seas to green pastures abroad rather than toil and labour against the waves of the Indian ocean.
Give us livelihoods, we are fed up of slogans which only leave us high and dry. Voters in Goa have spoken. Would the new government deliver?
(The writer is a retired University Professor and an Environmental Activist.)
