ANDREA FERNANDES
andrea@herald-goa.com
MAPUSA: The draft Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) prepared by the Chennai-based National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) which was the rejected by some ministers and MLAs on Friday has come as a sigh of relief to activists and concerned Goans.
Fishermen, shack owners, guesthouse owners, water sports operators are upset as not a single meeting has been conducted with them to explain what the CZMP is all about and how it would benefit them or what has to be shown in the maps.
The base maps used are the old survey maps that were taken from the Land Survey Department, but structures that have come up in the recent years are featuring in the local level CZM maps. One clear example is of a resort in Candolim which has no structures in the RP 2021, but is planted in the CZMP. This structure had also been set aside for demolition by the GCZMA in May 2019. The houses of locals do not appear in the maps since it is an old survey map but it’s surprising to see how these selective structures are shown in the CZMP map.
Speaking to Herald, Goencho Avaaz member Roshan Mathias, who has visiting the villages in Bardez to explain the plan, claimed that the map has not been prepared in consultation with the concerned stakeholders.
“Fishermen have been using the coastline for fishing activities in the various villages for the last several years but the CZMP has demarcated these areas as fishing wards rather than fishing villages. This has been done deliberately to make space for the builder lobby. Besides the NCSCM, the state government itself has failed to prepare detailed plans for long term housing needs of coastal fishermen in view of expansion and other needs, provisions of basic services including sanitation, safety and disaster preparedness. No physical detailed verification in the demarcation of the HTL, fishing villages or mapping of mangroves and khazans have been carried out but instead have been conveniently omitted or altered,” Roshan alleged.
“No Management Plan only local level CZM maps were sent to panchayats along with report. Many panchayats requested GCZMA to send technical experts to explain the maps at gram sabhas but none was available from the GCZMA. The CZMP seems to be a map prepared to satisfy the greed of selective companies and clients who have managed to have their way through corrupt officials within the departments,” Roshan charged.
He claimed that the entire state of Goa falls under the CRZ V category but this has not been demarcated and does not appear.
Activists opine that a hazard line is very much necessary in a management plan as a precaution for the people with regards to development and livelihood in and around the line, which if ignored could be at great risk due to the constant rise in shore line, floods, and tides. The CRZ notification 2011 mandated that the hazard line shall be taken into consideration while preparing the land use plan of the coastal areas. While the GCZMA, in a reply to an objection filed by the Candolim Residents and Consumer Forum regarding the omission of the hazard line in all maps of Goa states that amendments are made in the CRZ notification 2011 in which one paragraph mentioning the hazard line has been deleted hence making the hazard line not compulsory. Although a para has been deleted it has been noticed that there is a mention of hazard line in many other clauses of the notification.
In the CRZ areas, the fishing villages, common properties of the fishermen communities, fishing jetties, ice plants, fish drying platforms or area infrastructure facilities of fishing and local communities do not feature on the cadastral scale maps.
Claimed that the CZMPs have too many flaws, Goa Foundation founder Claude Alvares said, “The High Tide line is not marked as per the notification. Several projects which are known to be CRZ violators are not shown in the CZMP. The GCZMA does not have the earlier CZMPs approved for Goa in 1996 which actually should be used to compare with these new plans”.
The activists feel that the stakeholders should be taken into confidence while coming out with a new plan. The draft plans should also be made available in the local official language to make the entire exercise of a public consultation fruitful for the common man to effectively assist in the planning for the fragile coastal zones of Goa using their experience and knowledge of the local environment. The GCZMA officials should explain the reading of maps/legends at the taluka level for a meaningful public hearing and future planning.
