State govt has started preparing an island coastal regulation zone plan (ICRZP) to protect 13 islands in Goa. “State has issued a work order to the National Centre for Earth Science Studies (NCESS), Thiruvananthapuram, to prepare the ICRZP, 2019, for the 13 islands. Of these 13, one island, Conco, located in Canacona taluka, is less than 10 hectares in size,” state govt said.
The chief secretary said that steps have been taken to ensure that no developmental activities will be carried out on the islands that would be detrimental to their existence. “The state of Goa is in active consultation with Deltares, a Netherlands-based company, along with the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), for beach nourishment in the state,” the chief secretary said. He also said that Goa has taken elaborate steps to protect the coastal ecology.
By the end of this month, state govt is likely to receive the coastal zone management plan (CZMP) 2011 maps in a 1:4000 scale, after which it will start preparing the CZMP 2019 for Goa. The chief secretary, in an affidavit filed before the National Green Tribunal (NGT), stated that it has already started doing preliminary works for field mapping, verification of morphology/ecosystem, and land use, for the CZMP 2019.
The state said that concurrently, the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM), Chennai, has been given a work order to prepare shoreline change maps. The chief secretary said that the NCSCM has informed the state that by May 30, the updated CZMP in the scale of 1:25,000 and 1:4,000 would be provided.
After initial reluctance, the NCSCM agreed to generate the CZMP 2011 maps in a 1:4,000 scale and pave the way for finalisation of CZMP 2019 for the state. State govt had removed the discrepancies in the 2011 CZMP maps and submitted them to the NCSCM, to carry out corrections in the plan to finalise the CZMP for 2019. The NCSCM had said that they were required to revise the corresponding CZMP maps in a 1:25,000 scale, and submit the revised draft CZMP maps in a 1:25,000 scale (not 1:4,000) to the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority (GCZMA). After a meeting of the minister with NCSCM representatives, the Chennai-based centre agreed to generate the maps in a 1:4,000 scale.