PANAJI
The power to licence 'permissible activities' under the new Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification of 2019, hitherto with the Coastal Zone Management Authority (CZMA), has been delegated to local bodies and planning authorities by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), worrying environmentalists and activists.
The recent OM (office memorandum) laying down the procedure for permitting construction activity under the 2019 notification was issued by the CRZ section of the MoEF&CC and dispatched to coastal State governments across the country.
It rules that the local authority (panchayat) will be the licencing body for self-dwelling units up to 300 square meters of built up areas in CRZ areas. Also, building and construction projects in CRZ areas which do not attract the Environment Impact Assessment, 2006, notification will henceforth be licence by the State planning authority.
The Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA) which had to assess and recommend either yes or no, all construction activity in CRZ areas under the 2011 notification, will be bypassed altogether, according to the new guideline of the MoEF&CC.
The CRZ 2019 notification, which itself permits an array of construction activities earlier banned under the 2011 notification, however, can come into force only after the Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) of Goa are prepared and approved. The notification, itself, is also under challenge before the High Court.
In Goa, CZMP under the 2011 notification was recently approved by the National body and the State government is yet to kick-start the arduous process of preparing the CZMP under the 2019 notification.
Another significant change in the licencing regime under the CRZ 2019 notification will be for Island CRZ areas. Here too the State planning authority and the local body will have the licencing powers for construction projects which are not covered by the EIA, 2006 notification and for single dwelling units of up to 300 square meters.
This new liberal licencing regime under the 2019 CRZ notification is worrying for Goa, whose coast has seen massive construction activity, much of it in contravention of CRZ rules and buoyed by a corrupt political system both at the panchayat and State level.
Greens, meanwhile, are hoping that the challenge to the notification will bear fruit.
"Obviously it is prima facie a further dilution of procedures and delegation of powers, contrary to interests of local communities and the environment," said Abhijeet Prabhudesai, whose Rainbow Warriors is one of the petitions who have challenged the CRZ-2019 notification before the Bombay High Court.
Other Greens too are worried that the dilution of procedures to ensure ease of doing business in the highly vulnerable coastal areas will encourage indiscriminate concretization of the already congested coastal areas in Goa.
