FLY BY GOA, THE STATE'S COAST IS TRANSFORMING FROM GREEN TO GREY CONCRETE By Frederick Noronha
PANJIM: Fly by Goa, and you'll be in for a shock to minutely observe the changes brought about in India's smallest state over just three decades, as an innovative and just-completed video documentation using hi-tech satellite imagery says. "What this (pictoral documentation) seeks to do is take a trip along the Goan coast and show what it looked liked in 1971 and how it looks today," says National Institute of Oceanography (Goa) scientist Padmanabh Sathe. Bridges, industrial estates sprawling across hilltops, small towns getting fast congested, chaotic touristic development and destroyed sand-dunes are some of the features that emerge from Sathe's thirty-minute short-video, which is titled 'Fly by Goa: The Changing Shores'. "I'm not a film-maker. So the video turned out something different (from what was anticipated)," says Sathe modestly. But by juxtaposing satellite imagery -- a field he intimately works with -- on to video-shooting, he manages to make a point of how rapid coastal change is pinching Goa. Starting the journey at the Kali river, in Karnataka just south of Goa, Sathe winds his way northwards. Some parts of the remote taluka of Canacona -- which has been opening up to tourism only in the last decade or so -- look like what they did in the 'seventies. Canacona incidentally is one of the few areas which has forest, mountain and seashore all in close proximity to each other. But the river Talpona's shoreline has "changed significantly", having progressed seawards. This indicates the deposition of new sediments. Rajbag's sandy beach is over 50 metres wide, while Palolem was once famous for its sand-dunes and since has got overrun by tourism. Many places have changed drastically. Tourist "shanties" of all types crowd Palolem beach in Canacona. On the other hand, there's the secluded Agonda beach -- near where a giant project unsuccessfully tried to come up, getting blocked by villagers and others. >From Canacona and Quepem's rugged terrain, we shift to the "flat and fertile" Salcete, starting with the fishing village of Betul. "In 1971, the landscape looked benign. Eastern sides of the shore were wooded. Population pockets were largely far away from the sea-shore," says Sathe, talking of the south Goa sea coast. What the Town Planning authorities should be doing, the people had already done. But that has changed in some areas. In Cavelossim village, high profile tourism activity is visible across the entire beach, and the video catches a mechanised shovel scoop out sand-dunes to be taken to waiting trucks. Benaulim too is beginning to "get crowded". Colva is crowded with built-up structures, while a parking lot is placed right on the sand, meaning that it is continuously covered by a layer of sand! One small lagoon on Colva beach, launched amidst much fanfare in the 1970s at Colva, is today treated as virtually a dumping site. Fatorda, a small village of the 1970s, is now visibly "changed" when viewed from the sky, due to its high-profile football stadium. Mormugao taluka has only two important beaches, the "environmentally-degraded Baina" and Bogmalo beach. Next, the video and satellite pictures take us through San Jacinto island, the recent Konkan Railway route, and the man-made the Cumbarjua Canal. Chorao island, outside Panjim, symbolises an equilibrium between man and nature, argues Sathe. On the other hand, the neighbouring island of Divar is facing erosion, and invading saline river waters. "Today, Divar appears to be sinking. The river is shall-owing," says he. Sathe believes the difference between these two areas is the presence of coastal mangrove plants in Chorao. Mangroves, one of the few species that grow in saline water, have a major role in protecting coastal zones. He also explains the formation of a 'sandbar' across the mouth of the River Mandovi, which blocks navigation of larger vessels for part of the year. Sathe believes that the argument from Konkan Railway re-alignment campaigners -- who wanted to shift the route away from the coast and claimed that reclaimed and low-lying 'khazan' lands would get affected -- wasn't quite valid. But cities too have changed due to congestion and chaotic over-building. "In 1971, I was a schoolteacher in Mapusa, and know what the town looked like then," says Sathe, referring to the small commercial capital of North Goa which is now an over-built town, thanks to a mix of the building boom and politicians ever-eager to make deals with corruption. Satellite pictures from the 'eye in the sky' clearly reveal how one-time villages like Porvorim have changed with "innumerable" housing complexes over the last two to three decades. "In 1971, the road to Mapusa was marked by wide open spaces on either side, with the absence of concrete houses," says Sathe. He points to satellite images which seen a confusing mix of varied shades of grey to the untrained eye. But Siolim village in North Goa "looks exactly as it was 30 years ago". This area still has a tree cover, which rises above most rooftops. "The fast pace of change has still to reach here," says Sathe. In the 1970s, the North Goa beach belt was marked by wide open spaces upto 500 metres from the high-tide level, even though there was no law then mandating this. "This is the ideal setting for a sea-shore," says Sathe. He also looks at what once was the Queen of Goan Beaches, "Calangute beach of today... rather narrow, crowded and ugly". Anjuna, the other north Goa beach village, once had two sand-dunes. "One has gone. If this carries on, Anjuna simply won't be a beach," says Sathe. "Once the sand dunes goes away, the oceanic forces will take over." Vagator, the north Goa beach, was once known for its "majestic sand dunes". Coastal Pernem has recently seen a tourism boom, but beach-shacks visited showed neither owners nor customers present at the time of filming. Mandrem village is "still pristine", says Sathe, and a fresh water creek still survives very close to the coast. In the Pernem stretch, Sathe points to ironies like a restaurant named 'Hotel Sand Dune', built on top of a sand dune. Coastal sand dunes are made up of sand piled high by the wind. These act as a barrier against the action of waves and tides, and protect areas behind them from wave damage and salt water intrusions during storms. Some three decades ago, the Terekhol river mouth in northernmost Goa was rather narrow. But today this north Goa river has a "pretty wide" mouth. Turbidity showing up in post-monsoon rivers, like the Mandovi, come largely from the North Goa mining belt. Sathe describes this as a "small video-film on Goa's societal environmental issues". To get the point across, the film uses satellite images and aerial photographs, plus location shooting. "The film is useful while making a point with the anti-environment lobby as it speaks of science of the coastline based on aerial photographs and satellite pictures rather than emotions and vested interests," argues the scientist. In half-an-hour, it discusses how Goa has changed in the past three decades. To make it widely accessible, the scientist has put across the film in VCD format and ordinary CD (which can be viewed on an ordinary personal computer with a large colour monitor). It can also be seen on video cassette. Sathe's point obviously is that the technology can be used to tell the truth, and outline the situation as it really is. It took Sathe a year to put together this video "mainly because of the shooting". He had to go with a videographer, to get just the shots needed to tell the story -- for instance, sand blowing in the face of passersby at the Miramar circle, an area which has been wrongly sited on the beachfront. Says Dr Ligia Noronha of the Tata Energy Research Institute's Goa office: "There's a huge amount of information all based on satellite images (which is waiting to be studied)." "Changes are not over yet. They're taking place in broad day-light," adds the video commentary. It shows shots of luxury hotels being built in coastal Salcete, after precious sand-dunes are in the process of being demolished. "This is not a closed chapter. Anyone who's willing can take up this video and develop it further," is Sathe's open invite. Sathe has been working on satellite images for quite some time now, and says Goa has had detailed (1:25,000) pictures taken of its coastline in 1965, 1971 and 1981.(ENDS) Sathe can be contacted via email at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ To unsubscribe from Goanews Send a mail message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: 'unsubscribe goanews'
