Policies ultimately is about ‘who benefits’ isn’t it? By the way what is Blue Flag. It’s about environmental education, water quality and environmental management. In Goa, Blue Flag is being used as a crutch to get some more exchequers money to be distributed to the 11 projects ear marked for implementation. What is the role of stakeholders, educationist and the students, who can become the beneficiaries or the enablers?
Blue flag comes with a lot of responsibility, for example information about the eco-sensitive zones, water quality, code of conduct on the beach, and a minimum of five environmental activities to be conducted. If schools and colleges were given a chance to participate in the Blue Flag initiative, I believe we would see lot of activities such as ‘Meet our Ramponkars’, ‘Fish and angle with the Locals’ ‘These are our fishes’, ‘Check out the biodiversity’.
Beach areas are a right of every tourist and it’s a very big draw among mass tourist. It is also important to educate the tourist not to litter in the first place, teaching responsibility over personal rights. As per the approved projects a mention of information boarding is made. Drafting of code of conduct for the general public, and the role of Pollution control board is completely missing. It is also not known who will maintain the safety and security when the standards of the Blue Flags are violated, are the limited Beach Police or the Highway Patrol sufficient to control the surge of tourist? Though the idea of CCTV is welcome as it can make it safer for women, children and foreign tourist not to be harassed by unruly tourist. I feel that waste management activities should not happen directly at the tourist site, it should be managed elsewhere as there can be instances of leachate getting back into the sea water. Oh what fun, will we get the certification next year when the very mini treatment plants blatantly violate the regulations of blue flag when the quality of sea water is not met? Will it be another toy that gradually bites the dust at our expense?
If you have forgotten we had the famous sky bus that never saw the light of the day, the amphibian that failed the next day, the Mayem lake pedal boats the list will not end there. Blue flag also mandates that the algae and other vegetation should be left to decay unless they cause a nuisance, they are part of biodiversity, but will our tourist like it? The next question is who is going to conduct the annual audit? A charge given to the beach management committee. Can the people who are now crying foul be part of the big picture? The whole attitude of non-inclusiveness of stake holders is creating this big rift between residents (tax payers), indigenous communities and the policy implementers. Can we overcome these issues and handle it in a more mature way, it will be ideal to start with an open dialogue.
