Having come across the multiple news reports of irregular land-use conversion and the rapid housing infrastructure development continuing unabated in the State, it is more than evident that the developers are here to “now conquer Goa” once again.
As though the colonial wounds of occupation by the European colonialists would have already healed. And despite Goa still trying to convalesce from the regimes of military and missionary imposition by the Portuguese colonial rule, it needs to be remembered that Goa was liberated by Delhi on the early morning hours of December 19, 1961 when the order for Indian forces to cross the Mandovi River was received, upon which two rifle companies of the 2nd Sikh Light Infantry advanced on Panaji at 07:30 hrs. and secured the town without facing any resistance.
And even then, despite Orders from Portugal which were delivered from the Portuguese President in Lisbon that called for a ‘scorched earth’ policy ” that Goa was to be destroyed before it was given up to India, Governor General Manuel António Vassalo e Silva took the decision to surrender and he later described his orders to destroy Goa as "um sacrifÃcio inútil" (a useless sacrifice).
Hence, the outgoing Portuguese colonialists did not bear the rigidity in their hearts to destroy Goa’s uniqueness, but in the present, rapid Goan urbanisation threatens to give rise to suburbs amidst the tranquil calm of Goa’s villages in a format of unfathomable relentlessness.
According to Nuissl and Siedentop (2020): “Urbanisation is one of the major driving forces behind the formation of today’s land use systems. It almost always involves the conversion of land use from non-urban to urban uses. A great deal of contemporary urbanisation has been characterised as urban sprawl, i.e. a highly extensive form of land take for urban uses having environmentally detrimental effects.” (Nuissl & Siedentop, 2020, p. 75).
“Urban sprawl, a pattern of uncontrolled development around the periphery of a city, is an increasingly common feature of the built environment in the United States and other industrialised nations” (Ewing et al., 2002).
Urbanisation and
land use change
As per the “Outlook” which has been postulated by Nuissl and Siedentop (2020) in their Book Chapter entitled: Urbanisation and Land Use Change, the authors observe that: “It is widely accepted today that extensive urban land use change brings about several unwelcome effects in that it goes along with the loss of open land and natural resources, causes ecological damage, generates automobile dependence, wastes energy, leads to atmospheric pollution, imposes economic costs on local authori-ties, and implies potential negative social effects such as the exacerbation of spatial social segregation and the exclusion of non-car-owning households from a good deal of work and leisure facilities. The regulation of urban land use change is therefore a key issue of land use policy.” (Nuissl & Siedentop, 2020, p. 91).
Sustainable
development goals
According to the study by Kalfas et al. (2023), which assessed the effects of urbanisation and land use planning on achieving sustainable development goals: “The study showed that indicators of urbanisation quality are very key to achieving different SDGs. This indicates that sustainable urbanisation entails more than just converting agricultural land and forests without making any changes to them into cities, and it is equally one of the answers to the problem of the world’s population growth if it is done with vision and dedication. The study clearly shows that integrated land use strategies are important in achieving the SDGs. In this case, land use planning is mostly a local effort, though some nations employ guiding land use plans created at the regional or inter-municipal level. Furthermore, urbanisation opportunities and land-use plans have a great influence on the achievement of sustainable development goals.”
Land resource
management policy
According to Auzins et al. (2022) in their research study entitled: Land resource Management policy in selected European countries, which was published in the Academic Journal named: “Land”: “Spatial planning and regional development initiatives have received renewed attention during the last several years as means of resolving land use disputes and achieving sustainable land use. The new urban agenda and particular recommendations for urban and territorial planning, as well as scientific debate, all endorse this type of spatial governance as a significant and effective approach to addressing the issues related to sustainable land use.” (Auzins et al., 2022)
Keles (2001) in the Conference Paper entitled: Sustainable urbanization and its policy implications. The case of Turkey, opined that: “Local and regional governments may guarantee that communities are equipped with built-in mechanisms to confront and mitigate such changes and strengthen their resilience to large climatic shifts.” (Keles, 2001).
Challenges in
land use change
Nuissl and Siedentop (2020), had found it useful to account for a few challenges in this regard:
1. It appears crucial to embed any attempt to minimise urban land use change in a strategy which at the same time eliminates existing incentives for land-consuming development.
2. Since the rigid control of urban land use change is largely dependent on the political will to achieve this task (which is often lacking), the provision of powerful tools to monitor land use changes and to assess their various impacts is essential.
3. Given the variety of policy and planning instruments, it is worthwhile to evaluate the effectiveness of these instruments in different contexts and to also scrutinise the feasibility of possible combinations of different instruments.
4. Last but not least, more effective containment of urban sprawl requires social learning and a long-term agenda-setting process…All the relevant actors and stakeholders (policymakers, administration, chambers of commerce, associations, researchers, NGOs) are represented in them. The aim is to reach a consensus on land-saving targets and to ï¬nd suitable implementation strategies and instruments. (Nuissl & Siedentop, 2020, p. 92).
