Just one example should suffice: The Goa State Pollution Control Board has cleared the Rs. 395 crore proposal for a golf course resort at Tiracol (The Times of India, 6 June 2014), which envisages an 18-hole golf course of international standards, along with 185 luxury villas and 3 restaurants, taking up almost the whole village of Tiracol. This, despite the fact that there are a great many studies on the ill-effects of golf course tourism on the natural environment, local communities, and people working on the courses. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, an average golf course in a tropical country such as Thailand, a location not very different from Goa, needs 1500 kg of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides per year, and uses as much water as 60,000 rural villagers (http://www.unep.org/resourceefficiency, retrieved 13/6/14). Such impacts on the environment are far from green.
What does one mean by green tourism? This is a question that we asked people in Goa, and these are some of the responses we got…
Nikita Fernandes, architect who prepared a Cycle Plan for Panjim under the aegis of the citizens group ‘Aamchi Panaji’, has this to say,
“On my recent visit to Bhutan which has a large percentage of high-end tourist visitors, I was impressed with its simplicity. There are so many famous people visiting Bhutan although the facilities are very basic, like for example on trails or visits to any monuments, in this case the Tiger’s Nest, we didn’t have any escalators or lifts but simple logs embedded in the trail or stone slabs and we had to walk up. But the experience was unparalleled by any luxurious destination. Even the architecture is very vernacular and the most expensive hotels too have a low key demeanour. This kind of model must be tried in Goa.”
According to Kennedy Afonso, of Goans for Goa (GFG),
“High-end tourism will not come to Goa by building golf courses and more hotels, but by upgrading the existing infrastructure, beach cleanliness, garbage solutions, etc. Golf courses are welcome, but not at the cost of the environment and the locals. Such facilities are energy- and resource-guzzlers, we will be affected by this indiscriminate pumping of ground water, our basic amenities are being stretched…[We might soon have] no electricity, no water!”
Gouthami of Travel Another India, a tourism company that facilitates travel to lesser known destinations, says,
“I have just been travelling in the Dangs district of South Gujarat, a pristine and beautiful place, where the residents are mainly adivasis. The Government in 1971, to boost tourism, relocated a whole village, then dug an artificial lake, put up a rope way and a rose garden. I just could not believe that anyone could be that stupid! Here is this stunning locale and the State decides to make an artificial lake? Why not just highlight the natural beauty there? The name of the place is Saputara. We spoke to the people displaced in 1971 – they are still struggling and haven’t settled down. Meanwhile the State is digging another lake nearby!”
Says Adv. Albertina Almeida, a lawyer and women’s rights activist, who was involved in the struggle against golf courses in Goa in the 1990’s,
“The State seems to think that public memory is short, and is resurrecting golf courses with the same old arguments about not causing pollution, getting water from outside, etc. In the 90’s they marketed golf as this benign game that tourists would play and bring foreign exchange with them. What they are not talking about is the pollution of water sources by golf courses. And which is this place that has abundance of water to provide for a golf course’s daily needs? More importantly, can we afford to spare this much land for some rich tourists to play golf, when land is such a scarce resource in Goa? Can we let our very survival systems be attacked for some foreign exchange?”
Finally, highlighting the fact that greenness involves a concern not just for nature but also for the people dependent on the local environment, the St. Anthony’s Tenant and Mundkar Association, Tiracol, says,
“The Government of Goa has no right to impose anything on us without our consent. This project by Leading Hotels Ltd has been passed illegally and fraudulently, and will destroy Tiracol which we are committed to save.”
We would suggest that some defining points of a green master-plan for tourism could be:
1. A long term vision for promoting and modelling Goa into a model for genuine eco-tourism, most importantly one that strengthens existing natural and manmade infrastructure services and systems, and ideates projects that support local communities. The challenges of creating a genuinely ecology- and people-friendly tourism are not simple, for the two are sometimes in conflict with one another as can be seen in examples around the world, but one thing is certain: golf courses, and all other such unsustainable and unnatural landscapes, are simply nonsense.
2. A recognition of Goa’s natural and man-made ecosystem assets. All kinds of tourists are drawn to Goa for not only its pristine beauty but also its village life. If we don’t protect its natural assets and the interests of its local communities, and boost the diverse cultural capacities of these communities, we will lose not only invaluable livelihoods, resources and ecosystems, but business as well.
3. Local communities are the primary stakeholders in the present and future of Goa; let them be involved in the decision making process. Let them be made a part of the business plan and the profit-sharing as well. Indeed, successful tourist industries around the world hinge on building infrastructure for the locals, boosting local standards of living. It is this boost that attracts tourists to these locales.
4. NON-INTRUSIVE is the key word. Why spend on infrastructure and systems that are expensive, not indigenous, and require equally expensive and artificial systems for maintenance?
An example is the proposal to introduced bamboo walkways for tourists among the salt pans near Panjim. But there already are existing trails around the salt pans, so what is the need for new and exotic ones? If the Environment Minister of Goa, Mrs Alina Saldanha, can walk and talk with school children in the salt pans and khazaans of Panjim, in the absence of paved or raised walkways and any other intrusive infrastructure (but for an aide-held umbrella), why wouldn’t a tourist, high-end or otherwise, also enjoy this experience of indigenous Goa?
These, we think, are some of the sound tenets of a sustainable business plan for greening tourism in Goa. Leaders of government in state and country, are you listening?
(Amita Kanekar is an architectural
historian and novelist.)
(Tallulah D’Silva is an architect and founding curator of Global Shapers Panjim Hub – an initiative of World Economic Forum)
