As sea level rises, Goa beaches under threat

“I have told my son not to purchase property near the coast, since it would make for a poor long-term investment,” activist Claude Alvares said. He also spoke of a scenario when several of Goa’s beachside hotels would see parts of their property swallowed by the sea.

Alvares, who heads the Goa Foundation, noted that investment to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore made by major hotel chains face danger from the sea. “The Taj Holiday Village at Sinquerim is already facing the threat with the sea waters entering the hotel area,” Alvares said. The hotel came up long before the laws under the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) came up. Locals cautioned hoteliers near the Sinquerim Beach when they saw the water had almost reached the gate of the hotel.

Elsewhere, hotels have blatantly violated the laws related to constructing on the beaches. Continuing rise in sea levels could virtually spread doom on the tourism industry in Goa because it is concentrated along the 105-km long coastline.

Other activists say small hotels established in the 1960s have been forced to shut down after losing their land to the seas. But the possibility of an imminent environmental disaster does not matter to builders and politicians of Goa.

Scores of buildings are coming up on marginal lands as the real estate lobby scrambles to satiate the demand for a slice of Goa among the elite of Mumbai and Delhi. Speakers at the seminar said developers were mercilessly hacking mangroves to expand into the only buffer zone that stands between man and the vast expanse of water.

According to Nandkumar Kamat, a Professor at the Goa University, Goa could lose as much as 5 per cent of its land if the sea levels rise by one metre.

He said the intergovernmental panel on climate change, representing the thinking of the world community of climate scientists, presented a report in February this year, which stated that by 2100, the seas would rise by 18-59 cm. In other words, most of Goa’s beaches would cease to exist.