Drop 40 Goan villages from Ecologically Sensitive Areas’ list, CM Sawant urges Centre

“I have been following up on this issue with the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change since 2019. It was proposed that 99 villages should be categorised as ecologically sensitive areas. The criteria were that the village area must be contiguous, it should be at a certain height above sea level and it should have a diverse species of plants and animals,” CM Sawant told reporters.

He mentioned that 40 villages out of the list of 99 villages in the draft notification need to be dropped since they did not meet the requisite criteria.

“I had sent a proposal to the environment minister at the time to exclude the villages. If they want, they can add 10 more villages in the list of eco-sensitive areas, so the total number of villages will be 69. But, these 40 villages do not meet the criteria and should be dropped [from the list],” CM Sawant said.

In 2022, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change had issued a draft notification proposing that 99 villages in Goa, spread across 1,461 square kilometres area, to be notified as ecologically sensitive areas in the Western Ghats.

Earlier this week, an expert committee of the Union Ministry visited Goa and discussed issues concerning the draft notification with the villagers and stakeholders in Sattari and Canacona among other talukas. The panel also met the chief minister and Goa’s Environment Minister Nilesh Cabral.

Environmentalist Claude Alvares, who is the director of the Goa Foundation, said the draft notification concerning ecologically sensitive areas had been issued several times in the past and has not been finalised for years.

In a statement, Alvares said, “There has been no protest from Goa since the first notification was issued in 2014. The draft notification explicitly allows people to stay and live in ESAs, repair and extend their houses and encourages all forms of agriculture and small industries.”

He said that if all Goan villages knew the exact contents of the draft notification, they would all want to be part of the ecologically sensitive areas. “This is because the notification bans red category polluting industries, cement and thermal power plants, mining, real estate projects – all the activities that villages in Goa have been opposing for several years,” Alvares pointed out.