PANAJI
Back in the spotlight is the case of 99 Goan villages in the three talukas of Sattari, Sanguem and Canacona which are being tagged as eco-sensitive areas after the seven-member team appointed by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and headed by the retired Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Sanjay Kumar visited the State and held consultations with the Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, officials and also the local population in some of these contiguous villages.
From the remarks made by Sawant and some other Goa politicians and bureaucrats on the issue over the last few days, it would seem that this decision of the MoEF&CC to declare 1,461 square kilometres that these 99 mostly contiguous villages collectively make up in Goa as the Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) is a sudden bolt from the blue and Goa is unprepared.
Included in it were these 1,461 sq kms in Goa roughly covering 99 villages in Sattari (56), Sanguem (38) and five in Canacona talukas.
Also, the notification was to take effect sixty days after the GoI gazette containing the draft is made available to the public and sought suggestions and objections in those sixty days (July 7 to September 7 last year) which were to be filed in writing to the MoEF&CC Secretary, Indira Paryavaran Bhawan, CGO Complex, Jor bagh Road, Ali Ganj, New Delhi-110003, or by email at esz-mef@nic.in.
The actual area of ESAs will only be finalised based on recommendations of the States, views of stakeholders and that of the ESA Expert Committee (the seven-member committee headed by Kumar which was in Goa earlier this week), according to the original notification the MoEF&CC notification had said.
Fighting climate change logic behind ESAs
The process to identify eco-sensitive areas along the Western Ghats to be eventually protected dates back several years with 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 1,29,037 square kilometres long mountain range needed to be protected.
Later, another panel headed by space scientist K Kasturirangan, had recommended a smaller 37 per-cent area of the ghats encompassing 59,940 square kilometres as eco-sensitive area to be protected.
Environmentalists believe the ecologically sensitive areas are critical to mitigate and prevent disasters and encounter the very real challenges of Climate Change.
CS headed panel formed in Feb to assess areas
PANAJI: The State government meanwhile set up a committee headed by Chief Secretary Puneet Kumar Goel to do its own ground work on these 99 villages proposed as ESAs. Others on this committee which was tasked with physically monitoring the eco-sensitive areas around wildlife sanctuaries and national parks, which incidentally also cover the areas MoEF&CC demarcated as ESAs.
The committee in addition to the Chief Secretary also has on it the Secretaries to the Goa government holding charge of 11 different departments. Additionally, the panel has Sandeep Azrekar of the Nisarga Nature Club, Milind Gadgil of Parshuram Grameen Vikas Saunsthan, Valpoi and Professor M K Janarthnam who is the dean of the life sciences faculty of Goa University as an expert. It also has representatives of MoEF&CC, under whose complete tutelage it is functioning with instructions coming to this committee off and on from Delhi on how to effectively discharge its functions. The Additional Chief Conservator of Forests is its member-secretary.
Govt, netas confrontationist from the start
