PANAJI
The State government is awaiting approval of the National Coastal body to its updated Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) 2011 based on 1:4,000 scale in a bid to meet the January, 2025 deadline for completion of CZMP based on 2019 CRZ notification. The delay in notifying the updated plan has derailed CZMP 2019 work.
The Thiruvananthapuram-based National Centre for Earth Science Studies (NCESS) has informed the State that by January, 2025, it would be in position to submit only the draft plan, provided the CZMP 2011 based on 1:4,000 scale gets approval.
In September, the State forwarded the updated CZMP 2011 based on the 1:4,000 scale to NCZMA and MoEF&CC for approval and notification. The CZMP 2011, based on the 1:25,000 scale, was notified on September 6, 2022.
When contacted, Director Environment Johnson Fernandes said that the State is still awaiting communication from the Union Ministry for Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) over updated CZMP 2011. “We have not received any communication from the Centre. The updated plan first needs to be approved and recommended by the National Coastal Zone Management Authority and only after that it would be notified,” he said.
Sources informed that the agency is currently working on 1:25,000 scale as per CZMP 2011. Notifying CZMP 2011under the 1:4,000 scale is a crucial step ahead of drafting a new plan based on CRZ notification 2019, sources added.
Sources said that until the CZMP 2011 is notified under the 1:4,000 scales, it cannot be provided to the NCESS to prepare the CZMP 2019.
The NCESS has been provided with data like shape files of bridge, harbour, port, ferry, survey plots, municipal and panchayat boundaries with names, tenurial status of mangroves for removing the mangrove buffer from private land, list of islands, land use shape files of the approved CZMP 2011.
There has been a delay of almost five years since the CRZ notification 2019 was notified -- the Rules and Regulations of which are currently not applicable to Goa in the absence of the plan.
The MoEF&CC has currently stopped granting permissions under CRZ 2011 for developmental projects in the State due to delay in drafting CZMP based on CRZ 2019 notification -- whose rules are currently not applicable in Goa.
