PANAJI
In a move that could put spokes in some big ticket development projects, a draft notification issued by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change intends to declare 1,461 square kilometers in Goa as Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA).
Covered in these 1,461 sq kms are 99 villages in Sattari, Sanguem and Canacona talukas. In Sattari, 56 villages fall in the proposed ESA and five villages from Canacona. Sanguem taluka has 38 villages covered.
The draft notification issued by MoEF&CC covers in total a massive 56,825 square kilometers spread over five other States -- Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu -- in addition to Goa as one contiguous Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area.
MoEF&CC has said the notification will take effect sixty days from the day the GoI gazette containing the draft is made available to the public, even as it has sought suggestions and objections from stakeholders in the interim period.
The draft notification was issued by MoEF&CC earlier this week on Wednesday.
Objections and suggestions to the draft notification have to be filed in writing, within the specified period to the MoEF&CC Secretary, Indira Paryavaran Bhawan, CGO Complex, Jor bagh Road, Ali Ganj, New Delhi-110003, or by email at [email protected], says the draft notification.
The notification also says that the actual area will only be finalized based on recommendations of the States, views of stakeholders and that of the ESZ Expert Committee.
The process to identify eco-sensitive areas of the Western Ghats to be protected has been an ongoing process over several years with at least two different expert panels making separate recommendations.
First, the Madhav Gadgil-led Western Ghat Ecology Expert Panel had recommended nearly 75 per-cent of the nearly 1,29,037 square kilometer long mountain range needed to be protected.
A later panel headed by space scientist K Kasturirangan, had recommended a smaller 37 per-cent area of the ghats representing 59,940 square kilometers as eco-sensitive area to be protected.
None of the six States including Goa were in agreement of the recommendations of either of the two panels. However, back in 2014, the Centre issued a draft notification based on the Kasturirangan panel's recommendation proposing to declare 56,825 square kilometers of the ghats as eco-sensitive area.
The draft notification has since lapsed and the MoEF&CC issued a second draft in 2015 which also suffered the same fate as the first draft after Karnataka and a couple of other States strongly opposed it.
A third draft issued in 2018, also lapsed and the MoEF&CC has now issued this fresh draft notification, with the proposal to demarcate the same 56,825 square kilometers of the Western Ghats as eco-sensitive areas as the one proposed in the first draft of 2014.
Of interest to greens in Goa, however, will be the exact geographical coordinates of the 1,461 square kilometers of the ghats running through the State and ascertain if the sites of the three controversial linear projects they have been up-in-arms against coincide.
The village of Mollem, most of which is already in the boundaries of the Mollem National Park and at the epicentre of the agitations against the three linear projects, is one of the 99 which Wednesday's draft notification says is part of the proposed 1,461 sq kms ESA portion of the Western Ghats.
Officially, Goa, as in its government, had cited the pressures of "urbanisation" to object to the draft back in 2015 to seek reduction in the area within the State which is to be covered as ESA.
