The warning of a possible sharp increase of over two degrees Celsius in the maximum temperatures this summer should suffice to ask the question of why this is happening. It is not a normal phenomenon, for if it were, the government would have issued a warning asking people to take precautions. A two degrees Celsius rise in temperature above the normal is high. Goa has average summer temperatures of around 35 degrees Celsius with high humidity levels. Any rise higher than this could make the summer very unbearable, yet that is not the only concern. The implications of a rise in temperature are many and the reasons cannot be overlooked cursorily.
However much you may ignore climate change the reality of global warming keeps returning to remind us that it is there and it needs to be reversed. We don’t have to look too far back for evidence on changes in the weather patterns in Goa itself. Just a few months ago, Goa thrilled in the fact that it had a benevolent monsoon last year, when the Meteorological Department recorded the wettest monsoon in 100 years with 41 per cent surplus rains. The rainfall touched 165.4 inches of rain for the season, when the State’s average seasonal rainfall is 117.14 inches.
Wasn’t this an aberration in the weather pattern? Should we fear only when temperatures increase and not when the rainfall exceeds the average? A partial increase in the rainfall is acceptable but when it is 41 per cent more than normal it too should be a matter of concern. Yet, few may have thought that it was worth being worried about. For that matter, very few will worry about the rise in temperature other than complaining about the heat for the next two months, before forgetting all about it once the rains bring down the temperature. The reason for this is that we are yet to take climate change seriously.
Take for instance the fact that along with the warning, the government has advised citizens on dietary habits to beat the heat, which include to eat more fresh fruit, salads, drink fluids with electrolytes, lemon juice, avoid alcohol, tea, coffee, oily, spicy and salty foods. That’s all fine but why isn’t the government looking at long-term mitigation measures of climate change? That is also important and some quick decisions would be required to bring about the balance in the ecosystem. And by ecosystem it means the current three linear projects that are casting a dark shadow on the forests of Goa.
So here are a few questions: Will the cutting of thousands of trees for the three linear projects not hasten the climatic change effects in the State? Does Goa require these projects at the cost of the forests? No doubt there are plans to plant more trees in compensation for those that will be felled for the projects, but these will take years to achieve the status of full grown trees and just recently Herald had reported that the Goa government has a backlog in its reforestation efforts and that it has sought to plant saplings in Karnataka as it does not have land in the State.
The excess heat, the excess rain or the deficit rain which has occurred in past seasons, are all a pattern that has to be studied to arrive at the conclusion of why this is happening. We can’t leave out the fact that Goa’s mean annual temperature has increased by over 1°C since the beginning of the 20th century till date (1901-2018) and is projected to increase by 2°C by the 2030s. We are already in 2021 so we are less than a decade from that date. Goa can tarry no longer on its climate change mitigation programme. The time to act is now.
