The Environment Minister of Goa needs to urgently study environment laws. If she had done so, she would have stopped short of saying that the government will not go ahead with the Mopa airport without an Environment Impact Assessment. While the takeaway, from Minister Alina Saldanha’s comment, which we all knew, was that the Environment Impact Assessment has not been done, it’s a shocker that Environment Minister Saldanha, instead of batting for the MOEF notifications that EIA’s should be even done before land acquisition takes place, seems perfectly at ease for the EIA to be done now.
While Saldanha has completely done away with even pretending to follow her late husband Matanhy Saldanha’s line on most issues, including the emotionally contentious Mopa airport, she has further reduced herself to becoming a complete puppet that functions according to the strings that the Chief Minister pulls
She needs to be coached that the historic Rio declaration made at the Rio Conference of Environment and Development 1992 had various principles including one on Environment Impact Assessments. The principle states, “EIA as a national instrument, shall be undertaken for the proposed activities that are likely to have a significant adverse impact on the environment and are subject to a decision of a competent national authority”.
Over the years, the need has been felt to make the EIA process more encompassing. In 1978 Hydro projects, thermal power projects were subjected to environmental assessment. In 1994, EIA for environmental clearance was made mandatory under the Environment Protection Act. Then between 1994 and 2006, the MoEF listed 32 categories of listed projects including private investments.
Even now in an era where environment management is chosen to facilitate projects rather than reject them totally, all ministries have tread with caution regarding Green field projects which the Mopa airport is. Importantly, the government is considering changes in existing environmental laws including a withdrawal of mandatory environmental clearance prior to the modernisation of airports and ports. Greenfield projects are exempt from any such changes and will continue to require mandatory environmental clearance by project proponents’ right at the initial stage of screening and land scoping.
The preparation of the EIA report needs to go through the following stages. Screening, Scoping, Baseline, Data Collection, Prediction of Impacts, Evaluation of Impacts, Environmental Management Plan (EMP, Post Project Monitoring (PPM) and Public hearing. Does Minister Alina Saldanha know that all these should have been done culminating in the final EIA, before a single inch of land was acquired from a farmer, not after the entire land acquisition has been done and a Request for Qualification issued?
The Mopa project is going ahead on a highway riddled with unfairness and irregularity. Rules and norms, notifications and guidelines are being by-passed even though they are mandatory and not optional. Unfortunately no one in the Parrikar cabinet has the domain knowledge of what exactly is going wrong, or is interested and the same goes for Congress MLAs. More importantly, there are many politicians cutting across party lines who have strong vested interests in the project because of the exponential lead in the value of real estate in and around the airport, in which most politicians have invested. To many, the Mopa airport’s construction could be massive investment and growth opportunity.
Now there is an even more cruel reality. Even in South Goa, apart from a group of dedicated protestors led by Father Eremito Rebello and others from the Goa for Dabolim Only movement, the anti Mopa agitation does not have the mass energy – as opposed to mass support – as it once had. In fact it will be fair to say that there are more pro Mopa voices across Goa than the anti-Mopa ones and they include politicians from South Goa.
One wonders though, what Alina Saldanha’s vested interest is. After getting her seat in the House and her ministership by just being Mrs Matanhy Saldanha, can she ever hope to get elected by not espousing Matanhy’s causes with absolute seriousness? What she is doing now is offering lip service and only pretending to follow her husband’s footsteps.
