Leave Goa's hills alone or face Wayanad, warn experts

The writing is on Goa's wall for anyone who cares to read it. After the horrific Wayanad landslide disaster, Goa’s environmental experts, who have for long been warning authorities of natural calamities that could hit the coastal State if indiscriminate development continues, are now amplifying their voices of concern.

Claude Alvares, Director of Goa Foundation (GF), who has been fighting a legal battle against the large-scale conversion of no development land to settlement land, told Gomantak Times Digital if Goa’s hills were not left untouched, Wayanad-like landslides were inevitable.

“You have seen the landslides at Wayanad. The same thing will happen in Goa, (which has) same type of terrain, same type of rock and same type of rainfall.  You don’t touch the hills. Keep them (hills) the way they are. You don’t allow people to construct buildings on them (hills),” said Alvares, whose NGO has compelled the current government to retract bills and cancel amendments inserted into Town and Country Planning (TCP) Act or Regional Plan to facilitate alteration of land use.

In an “urgent message” put out by him recently in a video, he warned, “It’s about time the rest of the world comes to know what the BJP government in Goa is doing to Goa’s own hills. Over the last one year, the government has entertained nothing less than 172 applications under a new code of the TCP Act for converting natural hill slopes or no development slopes into settlement areas”.

Revealing alarming details of land-use irregularities, he said the government had already approved 45 applications that cover 8 lakh sq m of Goa’s hilly areas. In addition to these, there were another 40 applications under Section 39(A) of the TCP Act, covering 3 lakh sq m.

“We should all weep for the Wayanad victims. We have to also start weeping for Goa. Either you do that or you come out on the streets to protest this mass scale slaughter of hills for moneybags and the real estate businesses,” he urged.

Early this year, the State legislative assembly amended Section 39(A) of TCP Act to give wide powers to chief town planner for altering the zoning of land, including the Regional Plan and Outline Development Plan (ODP). 

The Goa Foundation has challenged the legality of Section 39(A) in the Bombay High Court of Goa, where it has pleaded for a stay of the provision along with cancellation of changes made in land use under it.

Alvares informed land use of vast stretches of Goan land are being converted under section 17(2) and section 39(A) of the TCP Act; “that’s (under section 17(2) and 39(A)) where all the (land use) changes have taken place, 31 lakh sq m have been changed under (section) 17(2) and there are 40 proposals alone for the hillslopes under section 39(A). These are different provisions under TCP Act (State TCP Minister Vishwajit) Rane has introduced without any protest from anybody”.

The land conversions have been done for developmental projects relating to real estate, resorts and other such commercial ventures.

Environmentalist Rajendra Kerkar also reiterated Goa was sitting on the precipice of another landslide disaster, after the one that occurred in 2021, which affected Satre, Karmali-Budruk, Karanzol-Savarde and Maushi-Zarme in the protected areas of Sattari. These areas were spread over 1.61 lakh sq m.

Kerkar said the 2021 landslides in a village “with no settlement” in Surla – Ambeachi-Gavol – had gone unnoticed till he circulated a documentary made from drone footages taken by him. According to him, the entire village was washed away in the disaster.

“No one was aware of it (landside). I took drone footages and made a documentary and circulated it. Only then, the government took note of it and constituted a committee, which prepared and submitted a report in 2023. Sadly, not a single mitigation action, suggested by the committee, has been implemented or even discussed in the assembly,” he lamented.

The report brought out by the committee, chaired by North Goa Collector Mamu Hage, classifies Goa as “landslide-prone region” because it is in the catchment of Western Ghats. Alerting the State about the danger of the natural disaster, it notes Goa can “experience landslides of various magnitudes at varying time intervals”.

It points out, apart from various natural factors, Goa’s landslides were caused by extreme precipitation on denuded surface with scant vegetation and human activities that weaken its slope and surface strata. The report clearly states the landslides in Sattari region were triggered by geological as well as anthropogenic – meaning originating from human activities – factors.

The report on landslides mentions the analysis carried out for State Action Plan on Climate Change (SAPCC) that shows Goa was already experiencing extreme rainfall. Considering that SAPCC projects “extreme rainfall events” in future, the committee recommends that its findings be included in the State’s landslide management plan.  

An interesting observation made by the committee in the report is: “In the present case, the likely attributes of landslides are deep chemical weathering combined with a steep slope on which natural vegetation has been replaced by cash crops”.

In recent times, many indigenous species of plants on Goa’s hillslopes have been replaced by commercial cash crops, especially cashew. The report has made several suggestions for the mitigation and prevention of landslides in the future.

“Significant events of landslides were not very frequent in Goa but considering the events that occurred this year in 2021, it is necessary to have a broader strategy towards mitigation and ensure effective management during such events,” cautions the study.

A sage suggestion, but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears. And therefore, today, flagrant attempts of massive destruction of Goa’s hills and forests persists unbated. This is weakening and destabilising hillslopes, making them vulnerable to soil erosion and landslides.