PANAJI
The National Coastal Zone Management Authority (NCZMA) has granted its final approval to the much-delayed Goa Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) accepting some -- not all -- of the changes that were sought by the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority, highly placed sources familiar with the decision, said.
The decision was ratified in a meeting of the NCZMA held in Delhi on Thursday. However, details concerning the changes suggested by the Goa government in the plan will be clear after the minutes of the meeting are approved and circulated among the members.
On August 18, the GCZMA received the final draft of the CZMP from the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) Chennai that has been drafted based on the CRZ 2011 notification that was placed before the GCZMA meeting held the following day on August 19, where it was approved and sent to the NCZMA for final approval.
At the meeting held on August 19, several expert members made “observations” to the procedure that was followed in approving the final draft as well as to certain omissions even in the final draft of the plan.
However, the authority decided to approve the final draft on August 19 as sent by the NCSCM and forward it to the NCZMA for approval.
“With this it can finally be said that Goa has a coastal zone management plan as we were mandated to prepare under the 2011 CRZ notification and the issue of the plan not being prepared or finalised is almost complete,” the source said.
Goa’s coastal zone management plan has been prepared by the NCSCM, that had rejected the GCZMA’s suggestion to include an additional 46-square kilometres of sand dunes to the dunes already identified claiming that among other things, they were not obliged to depict any geographical formations beyond 500 metres of the high tide line and that the maps sent by the villagers were consulted and some of the changes included.
“The NCSCM informed that these have been verified with aerial photos and other data as available in NCSCM and that maps prepared by the village panchayats, shape file containing missing sand dunes provided by the United Goa Foundation, comments/ suggestions, received from Goa Foundation and various Taluka committees were also consulted while finalising sand dunes of Goa,” the GCZMA observed in its decision.
Villagers and village groups had sought several changes including missing creeks, coastal features, mangroves, etc.
The authority also rejected suggestions from its expert members that reserve forests be depicted along the coast, pointing out that it was only the forest department that had the powers to notify reserved forests as well as observations concerning the non-following of procedure was addressed with the GCZMA.
It claimed that procedure and consultation was followed through the creation of taluka level committees who took on board many of the suggestions, held a ground truthing exercise and incorporated many of the changes in the final plan.
