The fate of the small, enchanting State of Goa is intimately and inextricably linked with the future of the Western Ghats. As a matter of fact, the segment of the Western Ghats within Goa constitutes the transitional zone between the northern and southern segments of these grand mountains and therefore has its own unique character. Except for one or two roads in the north, major highways into (or out of) Goa have perforce been constructed through the Ghats, some of them right through wildlife sanctuaries. Of course, this has happened because the roads were constructed earlier and the sanctuaries notified later. In areas like the south of Goa, the Western Ghats extend their reach to touch the coast.

The influence of the ghat ecosystem is reflected in the richness and the range of Goa’s biodiversity. If you go by the most recent (2010) report of the Forest Survey of India, forest cover in Goa is 58% of the land area (the desirable national coverage is 33%). Most States in India have less than 10%. Of this massive forested area, 62% is under protected area management under a total of 5 wildlife sanctuaries, one National Park and the unique bird sanctuary named after the late, well known ornithologist, Salim Ali.

The biodiversity of the State of Goa is primarily a reflection of the biodiversity of the Western Ghats and has been sustainably used and exploited by local communities for centuries through the elaborately organised system of comunidades. The comunidade in each village dealt principally, if not exclusively, with agricultural lands and their produce. Each comunidade encompassed the non-privately owned residual land of the village and therefore functioned as its commons. The emphasis was on garden crops which included paddy.

The plant species of the Western Ghats are well studied and so is the fauna which includes important species like the tiger and the king cobra. A significant number of these are endemic. On average, there are over 200 bird species in each sanctuary. If one includes the other fauna including mammals, reptiles, fish and amphibians, and the floral species, we are talking of some 1,000 species (at our present stage of knowledge) that each sanctuary, on average,  hosts. Naturally, many of these species extend much beyond the range of these protected areas and are to be found in other parts of Goa as well. Ornitologists were amazed to sight a total of 54 bird species on a single morning at the Succoor plateau and the Pilerne lake.

The hydrological cycle – which rules all life in the State – is principally responsible for the vegetative and faunal richness. The monsoon precipitation discharges maximum within the ghat section – where annual rainfall averages some 5000 mm per year – before it gradually tapers towards the plains. Even there, it rarely slips below 2500 mm. Superficially, it does appear that the entire vegetation is therefore rain-fed (with a dry period of eight months).However, that would be an incorrect understanding of reality for in actual fact the ghats act as massive water harvesting zone,soaking in and storing enormous quantities of monsoon precipitation which are released gradually in the form of hundreds of springs all over the State. Not for nothing do these springs retain a special bond with the village communities who depend on them. Most of them in fact have emotive names.They are part and parcel of the life of Goan villages.

Though the central environment ministry has recently written to the Goa Government to consider the declaration of the Madei Wildlife Sanctuary as a tiger reserve, this request is based largely on recent sighting of tigers and their cubs in the Madei area which lies in the north-east of Goa. But tigers have been seen outside Netravalli wildlife sanctuary in the south-east as well. When the declarations for the Madei and Netravalli wildlife sanctuaries were issued in the year 2000, the presence of the tiger was relied upon as a key reason.

The number of tigers may have reduced considerably in recent decades because of “habitat fragmentation, degradation and eventual loss of habitat and intensive poaching of tigers and their prey.” But that the tiger roamed practically freely in these areas is proven by the fact that several places have names still associated with the majestic animal: Vagachiper, Vagator, Vagheri, Vagpedi (cave of the tiger), etc.

Most of the rainfall precipitation of the southwest monsoon falls within the catchments of eleven rivers with some 42 tributaries. However, all these rivers are tidal in nature and in a couple of them, the tidal influence is felt upto 40 km inland. This interaction between salt and sweet water has its own ecological dynamics. For six months in the year, the water is predominantly sweet and over the next six months it gets progressively salt. Wells along these rivers register these changes faithfully and so does the vegetation. As the rivers reduce in volume, paddy fields (locally called “puran sheti”) emerge in their beds as another sustainable (in fact, renewable) method of raising food.

The coastal areas themselves have their own distinct eco-systems symbolised by large sand dunes and mangrove forests. The Mandovi-Zuari estuaries are invariably studied as the “Mandovi Zuari estuarine complex.”  Seen united, the complex is one of the largest in the country. The two estuaries are connected by the Cumbarjua canal, home to a unique species of saltwater muggers. Mining and the removal of the vegetation in the Western Ghat region have been responsible for considerable damage to the massive beds of both estuaries.

Four large sandy beaches, two in the north and two in the south, have been declared turtle nesting sites under the 2011 CRZ Notification.

There is still discussion going on about whether the sadas (raised lands or plateaus) fall within the Western Ghats ecosystem due to their elevation and their continuity with the mountain range.  However, one predominant factor that aligns them more to the Western Ghats than to the plains or the coasts is again endemicity and species diversity. In fact, the plant diversity index has been found to be richer on the sadas than even in the ghat portions. This is a somewhat unsettling discovery for most, though it has been known for some time among researchers. As per conventional perceptions of the Town Planning department, these sadas are best kept for industrial estates since they appear to be wastelands or barren in character! The department does not employ on its staff any person who knows anything about plants, yet it decides land-uses for a State choking with forests and notifies these land-uses from time to time.

This then is the incredible natural endowment of this astonishing bioregion called Goa which is now being recklessly torn apart by a host of mega housing developers on the coastal side and mine owners fatally affected by the cancer of quick and enormous wealth in the areas close to, and within, the ghats themselves. In the middle of both coast and ghat, the sadas are offered as sacrificial platforms for small industry. The natural fabric is being sundered, extracted, squeezed. In all these cases, the plants, trees and forests go first. There has been no variation in that miserable story. It almost looks as if every developer or miner or industrialist has arrived at his quarry with an unmistakeable hostility to plants.

That is also the sole reason why the whole of Goa has been in a rage for nearly a decade now. The agitations have been pitched against mega-housing, SEZs and mines. They have led to turbulence noticed not just nationally, but internationally, with entire groups of NRI Goan associations demanding a freeze to allow this tiny place to breathe and not get laid out for impending burial. Only the ruling class (political parties manifest no difference in perceptions of development) appears oblivious to these extremely serious anxieties and concerns.

The subordination of the coastal section to the demands of international tourism and “second-home-in-Goa” culture will not be discussed here. But the overwhelming destruction of the Western Ghats ecosystem in Goa through open cast mining – with the explicit approval of the Ministry of Environment and Forests – needs to be told – even if in some gory detail – since the dismantling of the State of Goa at the present moment is being carried out simply to support the intensive industrial development of China – an objective that one is unable to find recorded in either the State’s or the country’s development agenda.

The mining legacy

The erstwhile Portuguese colonial regime handed out 791 mining concessions across the entire state “in perpetuity.” These concessions were issued as pieces of paper and were designed purely for superficial, manual mining. Once the State of Goa became part of the Indian union in 1961, it attempted to bring the mining concessions under the control of Indian law. This the mine owners resisted time and again. In 1987, Parliament finally passed a special law exclusively to deal with mining leases in the State of Goa called the “The Goa, Daman and Diu Mining Concessions (Abolition and Declaration as Mining Leases) Act by which the concessions were finally abolished and were thereafter given the status of “deemed mining leases.” The lease owners were required to file applications for first renewal of these leases under the Indian laws the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 within six months.

The Parliamentary Act recognised only 591 leases out of the total 791 leases. These were now listed in a Schedule annexed to the Act. Of these, only 336 are said to have filed applications for renewal within the statutory period and it is these leases that the government of Goa considers as validly subsisting leases even today. Of these, less than one-third could be counted as “active” leases. Despite the 1987 Act, however, the owners refused to submit to the EIA notification issued under the Environment Protection Act when it was notified in 1994. The Goa Foundation was compelled to move the Supreme Court in 2004 which then forced them all to submit to the environment clearance process laid down under the Act or stop mining forthwith.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests at this time was headed by A. Raja who found to his delight over a hundred mining lease owners knocking at his door for urgent environment clearances. The rest is history. Approximately 160 mining leases in Goa were granted environment clearances en masse (without any site inspection or study of their locations) from the period 2005 to 2010 when the then Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh finally imposed a moratorium on further clearances. That moratorium is still in force till the time of writing this article.

Most, if not all, of the environment clearances were based on incorrect data, falsified information, and mostly fraudulent Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) reports. A good number, for example, were approved by the Environment Ministry within one km of the boundaries of wildlife sanctuaries. Further, more than half the environment clearances were issued for forest areas declared as “reserved forests” under the Indian Forest Act, 1927. Almost all the mining companies were permitted to carry on their operations despite their locations within the State’s sensitive water catchment areas.

The four year generous disbursement of environment clearances heralded the largest sacrifice of the natural environment in one tiny location made by an Environment Ministry that had become completely wanton and degenerate. Thus, for example, the Ministry cleared several mining proposals in a single village, each without reference to the other, and with no studies on cumulative impacts, pushing common villagers and their living environments into hell.

The State Government, at the receiving end of much public abuse for doing nothing to stop the worst excesses, finally wrote to the Ministry itself complaining that the EIAs on which the environment clearances had been issued were falsified documents. However, it made no demand for their recall and since the bulk of the then operating mines had already been issued their clearance orders, the scope for their recall appeared wholly restricted or non-existent.

This factual aspect of the environment clearances, that they contained significantly false information, is now confirmed by an elaborate study of these clearances and their reflection with ground realities. The study was overseen by Dr Madhav Gadgil for the Goa government which commissioned it as part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations of the State.

Since mining is a “red category” industry with admitted destructive potential, it was incumbent on government to evaluate its impacts and decide on whether it was not better to forgo the industry altogether on the grounds that the economic, social and environmental costs from the activity are unacceptable high and the damage in all cases is irreversible. However, the spectre of unemployment was repeatedly raised by the industry lobby to permit “business as usual.” As a result, no change of any significance was forthcoming.

The environmental impacts of open cast mining are undisputed and well known. Almost the primary havoc is played out on forestry systems. In the present case, more than three quarters of the mines are located within forested sections of the Western Ghats, an area of maximum biodiversity or within the Working Plan Divisions. But this did not come in the way of allowing such mines to operate. The Ministry rejected no mining proposal in any forest area. It allowed all and sundry proposals. It issued environmental clearances to the worst miners first because they came up quickest with the requisite blood money. It allowed environmental clearances within the limits of wildlife sanctuaries as well.

Nothing was permitted to come in the way of permitting the destruction of Goa’s natural assets and endowments, not even the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA) passed by Parliament, which does not permit diversion of forests without the consent of forest dwellers. The FRA came into force on 1^st January 2008. Despite this, the Ministry continued to entertain applications from Goa (and elsewhere) for diversion of forest areas to mining. By the time it issued a circular in June 2009 informing state governments that no forest clearances would be granted if they did not follow the provisions laid down in the FRA, it had itself cleared 24 forest proposals in Goa alone in violation of the same Act.

Already five years ago, the Chief Secretary of the State had issued a written declaration that no forest land, degraded or otherwise, was available any longer for compensatory afforestation anywhere in Goa. However, orders for diversion of forest areas, including for mining operations, continued to be issued.

The second connected assault of open cast mining was on the water regime: groundwater aquifers and the forests in river and hill range catchments invariably go together. In other words, they are found routinely in association. Mining removed not only the forest above the land, but doubled the assault on the ground water regime below by a total disruption and evacuation of ground water aquifers. The environment clearances granted by the Ministry clearly acknowledged that the mining operations would be going below the water table or that they would in fact intersect the water table. It made no difference to the decision of the Ministry, which approved those cases as well.

The mining companies are already supplying water now in tankers in those villages that had been become water-drought areas due to their activities. In Sirigao village, venue of the famous Lairai Devi Zatra where lakhs congregate, the wells are now dry in the midst of July, at the height of the monsoon. The only remaining water tank used by the devotees for their ritual baths prior to worship, was polluted by mining silt this summer (2012). All the environment clearances issued state that the impact of the mining on the ground water has been examined and that there would be no crisis. Even after the crisis in Sirigao was confirmed by an elaborate study conducted by NEERI under the direction of the Bombay High Court, the Ministry refused to suspend of withdraw its clearances. As for the State Government, it has found it appropriate to renew the very same leases responsible for the water scarcity for another 20 years, that is, till 2027!

The third most significant damage from open cast mining has been the contamination of streams and rivers with mining silt, from mining operations and from dumps. As most of the leases granted environment clearance wanted to mine in as much area as possible within the lease, environment clearances were granted despite the fact that the Ministry knew that the dumps – comprising excavated soil, waste, rocks and poor grade ore – would be dumped outside the lease causing their own additional havoc there. Not much attention was paid to the environmental management of these dumps and many of them have eroded in the plentiful rainfall and gone down through streams and nullahs into the major rivers. Worse, all the soluble elements that normally associate with iron ore in these dumps have been washed into the water bodies. The sediments in turn have raised the river beds, increasing the tendency of flooding in these areas.

In 1986, when the NIO first released a study on the impact of mining silt in the estuaries of both rivers, it estimated 60,000 tonnes of mining silt in various forms were entering the rivers every year, forming a thick film of sediment on river and estuarine beds, smothering all estuarine bottom feeders including clams. At that time, the production of ore from Goa was in the region of only 15 million tonnes. Today, rampant illegal and excessive mining has pushed the production up to more than 45 million tonnes (in 2010-11, it reached 54 million tonnes). This means three times the amount of soil sediment entered the rivers in 1986. The silt has now damaged even the coral reefs. A small tourist industry based on taking visitors to the coral islands is now eliminated simply because the reefs are clouded in red and no longer visible.

One small segment of the Zuari river today has more than 30 jetties where ore is transferred to barges leaving the river bed flush with contaminants from mining operations along the mouths of both the rivers. No permissions for the jetties have been taken under the country’s CRZ notification. The Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority, like other authorities in the State, appears helpless to act since the mines portfolio continues to remain with the Chief Minister and this inhibits any thought of action as the miners invariably have the ear of the Minister.

More than 40 barge building yards have come up without permission and in violation of CRZ laws along the Zuari river to create and maintain the capacity for even larger exports of ore. An NIO report indicates considerable pollution of the Zuari river with heavy metals and disturbance to the clam fisheries including the windowpane oyster (Placuna placenta)

The government’s only refrain has been that the mining need not be closed or even curtailed because it employs people and alternative jobs are simply not available. This almost standard response is simply unacceptable since the mining industry has destroyed agricultural livelihoods, is poised to destroy more, and now chooses to make a virtue of employing those displaced from agriculture. But no industry that provides employment that is based on the irreversible destruction of natural endowments can have a future, certainly not in this day and age when governments globally pretend or claim to promote sustainable development.

Besides, neither the government of India nor the government of Goa has displayed either the capacity, imagination or firmness to deal with any of these issues squarely.

For instance, if one takes the case of the Selaulim reservoir across the Selaulim river in south Goa, one finds that the waters of this dam which supply the entire population of south Goa, are already contaminated. A NEERI report twenty years ago warned that the waters behind the dam indicated the presence of iron and manganese above permissible levels. What the contamination is today nobody wants to know since four mining leases at the moment have been granted environment clearances to work within the catchment area, close to the reservoir! On 10.7.2012, newspapers reported that water to the south of Goa was being drastically restricted since the filters were jammed with mining silt and the manganese in the water exceeded permissible norms (3-4mg instead of 0.5 mg) thereby raising the spectre of slow and long term manganese poisoning of half the population.

Similarly, mining has destabilised the Opa Water Works which supplies filtered water to the north of Goa. The entire upstream of Khandepar river plays unwilling host to mining segments. Two of the powerful mining groups that have damaged the water course include Vedanta and the Fomento Group. The quantities of mining silt in the Khandepar river – on which the Water Works is located – periodically require shutting down of the plant and use of clean downstream water to clear clogged filters. This has been going on for several years. The Goa government meekly picks up the costs.

The impact on public health from  mining is well documented by a medical study carried out by TERI. Both in terms of noise and dust pollution, mining is now one of the principal cause of violations. The mining industry proceeds by bribing sections of local communities. The Goa Foundation has submitted in one PIL evidence of contracts signed between mining companies and villagers in which the companies agree to a monthly dole in exchange for the right to continue indiscriminately polluting the environment. The TERI health study shows remarkable differences in respiratory illness between people facing mining trucks daily in the mining areas when compared with those along the coast.

Expert bodies ignored

It is not that the political establishment does not recognise that irreparable harm is being done to the ecology, but it is unable or unwilling to act simply because of the enormous influence of the miners on the state’s politics. This influence has increased with the phenomenal earnings of the industry over the past six years which has consistently been more than the state’s budget.

In 1982 itself, Dr. M.S. Swaminathan chaired the panel to prepare “an eco development plan for Goa.” Thirty years later, none of the recommendations have been implemented.

After this, the then (Tata) Energy Research Institute (TERI) produced a detailed report on environment destruction from mining called the AEQM study and evaluated the costs of the operation and included the rehabilitation costs.  The report was financed by the Goa government and then promptly shelved.

More recently, the statutory Regional Plan for Goa 2021 was notified demarcating a huge area in terms of eco-sensitive zone 1 or eco-sensitive zone 2.  The Plan was produced by a Task Force headed by Charles Correa which clearly indicated that the mining industry has to be reviewed because of well admitted and massive ecological damage. The plan has been once again denotified though the government has proposed to renotify by it December 2012. This exercise is not transparent and may have been done in order to accommodate interests presumably closer to the party now in power.

A year ago, we have the most recent expression of ecological concerns in the form of the Madhav Gadgil-led Western Ghats Ecology Experts Panel (WGEEP) Report.  The report has also indicated that vast areas of the Western Ghats should be kept out of of bounds for industry, mining, etc. The Goa government is yet to make its position known on the findings of the report.

If that were not enough, yet one more report of the Goa Golden Jubilee Committee on Goa Vision 2035 headed by Dr Raghunath Mashelkar (former CSIR chief) was released. It also suggests a cap on mining which would bring production down to half its present output, not more than 20-25 million tonnes. Even that has not had much impact on the political class. The Regional Plan 2021, the Mashelkar report, the Swaminathan Eco-Development Plan, the TERI report were all produced by agencies set up by the Goa government.

Instead, the Goa government has moved in reverse.

Despite Supreme Court’s orders, it allowed several mines to continue their operations in the State’s wildlife sanctuaries till the Goa Foundation petitioned the Central Empowered Committee in 2003 which shut them all down forthwith. Those closed mines remained unrehabilitated till this year when anothr PIL was filed for their rehabilitation and the High Court then had to pass appropriate orders.

The Goa government therefore tried to withdraw large areas from the purview of the Madei and Netravalli sanctuaries in order to protect the existence of a large number of mines in these areas. It set up a local committee to advise it on how it could deal with the problems of the local communities affected by the notification of both sanctuaries. The report of the committee naturally advised government to denotify vast sections of both sanctuaries. The Goa government approached the Supreme Court with a proposal to denotify all the areas notified under section 18 of the Wildlife Act, 1972. Its application was however unceremoniously thrown out by the Supreme Court in 2004.

Undeterred, it set up a committee to decide buffer zones from the wildlife sanctuaries in the State. The committee decided that there was no need to have any buffer zone at all and that mining could be allowed even close to the sanctuaries with the only restrict that there should be no mining activity during night time! This report was also rejected by the environment ministry. A zero buffer did not match with the one km safety zone the Supreme Court had installed for all sanctuaries and national parks by an order passed on 4.8.2006.

The sorrier record is concerning the rehabilitation of mined out areas. So-called reforestation has been carried out, that too only in some areas, with useless, exotic species like Australian acacias. Though mining has been going on for more than 50 years, not a single mine has been rehabilitated except for one small patch at Sanquelim belonging to the erstwhile Sesa Goa which is now routinely used to show visitors over the last two decades.

Since the government refuses to act in defence of the environment  and refuses to promote sustainable development, the mantle of rebellion and environmental protection has devolved to citizens groups and civil society as a whole.

The population rebellion against destructive development

Popular rebellions in Goa against environmentally destructive projects are nothing new or unprecedented. They erupt time and again, achieve their goals, then recede. Examples that come readily to mind are the 1974 agitation that led to the closure of Zuari Agro Chemicals which was found dumping arsenic-contaminated wastes into the sea; the protests against silica mining on Goa’s southern beaches; golf courses (till today not one has seen the light of day); and, more recently, fairly successful revolts against the notification of the statutory Regional Plan 2011 (which was denotified as a result), SEZs, and several other projects too numerous to mention.

The resistance against mining has been gradual, but is now become increasingly worrisome for the industry. At one time, more than 50 years ago, with the draconian Portuguese in command, there was absolutely no scope for resistance against mining barons and their activities. It took some time for villagers to realise that they could voice their protests under India’s democratic conditions after the State was taken back from the Portuguese in 1961. Even so, resistance remained small and episodic. The massive increase in mining due to the Chinese boom which commenced around 2005 ignited the rebellion.

In numerous vilages – Surla, Pilgao, Colomba, Caurem, Sirigao, Advalpale, Dharbondara – resistance to mining has tipped the scale against mine owners and has them on the run. The Dempo mining group sold out to Sesa Goa (Vedanta) because it no longer wanted to face the hassles of facing people whose natural environment and resources had been destroyed by its operations.

The resentment against mining is now reflected in public hearings where villagers vociferously denounce mining projects. (The environment ministry ignored the reports of even those public hearings in which there was a unanimous decision not to allow a mine to operate. However, recent legal rulings have made that difficult to do in future.) It was the din from Goa deployed all over the media that finally led Jairam Ramesh to stop consideration of further environment clearanes in February 2010.

Village communities, upset with the endless and relentless trucking on village roads regularly come out of their homes to block mining traffic. There is now a steady line of villagers before the High Court seeking remedies relating to the impacts on their livelihoods from indiscriminate mining activities including dust pollution. The Bombay High Court recognises that mining is now a major issue before several of its benches.

Likewise, tribal groups in the State who are also implacably opposed to mining, have demanded that without their consent, no forest in their neighbourhood can be processed for diversion by the environment ministry without their consent under the Forest Rights Act. Struck with the enormous destruction of forests by the mining industry, both the Congress and now the BJP government have vowed that no further proposals for diversion of forest for mining will now be supported by the State government.

If present demands of groups like the Goa Foundation are accepted, only a few mines outside the direct environment of the Western Ghats forested areas and river catchments would be permitted to operate and that too under the strict supervision of local communities.

As the present BJP-led government is committed to more rather than less mining – its recent proposals include removal and sale of mining dumps as well – it can be safely predicted that larger areas of Goa will come under turmoil as threats to livelihoods from mining expand to newer areas.

At the present moment, all environment groups are unanimously decided that they will continue their actions against mining till the political class recognises and admits that the interests of mining and of Goan ecology, especially the long term susvival of its biodiversity, are irreconcilable. Either the mining industry has to be phased out of the State of Goa or all talk of conserving Goa’s biodiversity is hypocritical.  The environment groups have been solidly behind the Gadgil Panel Report which has recommended closure of approximately 44 iron ore mines in Western Ghats areas. Pursuant to the submission of the report, Western Ghats environment groups have petitioned the National Green Tribunal for injunction against any activities in the zones demarcated as ESZ- I and ESZ – II in the panel’s report till the Ministry is willing to take a firm call on its recommendations.

References:

1)     The Goa Foundation and Goa Forest Department: Goa Biodiversity and Action Plan, submitted to Ministry of Environment and Forests.

2)     M.S. Swaminathan, “An Eco-Development Plan for Goa,” (1982)

3)     TERI, “Areawide Environmental Quality Management (AEQM) plan for the mining belt of Goa (1997)

4)     The Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Experts Panel, MoEF, (2011)

5)     Regional Plan for Goa 2021, Government of Goa. (2011)

6)     Parulekar et al, “Effect of mining activities on the clam fisheries and bottom fauna of Goa estuaries.” NIO (1985)

7)     NEERI report on Sirigao water problem (2011)

8)     Report of the Mashelkar Committee on “Goa Vision 2035” (2012)

(Published in “Stories of Struggles/Environmental Movements in Western Ghats” released by AERF on the final day of the Save the Western Ghats Conclave, 2012, Mahableshwar, Maharashtra, India)