Mollem National Park has long been the emerald in the crown of Goa.
The lush jungle that covers this steep area of India’s Western Ghats mountain range is home to leopards, Bengal tigers, pangolins, black panthers and hundreds of endemic species of flora and fauna not found anywhere else on the planet. The muscular beast from the state of Goa – the gaur, or Indian bison – is often seen walking through the forests, and the park’s Dudhsagar waterfall is among the highest in the country.
However, Mollem and the adjacent Bhagwan Mahaveer Shrine, covering a protected area of 240 km2, is set to be fragmented and partially deforested by three invading projects; the duplication of a railway, the expansion of a highway and an electric power transmission line.
“This is an area declared by UNESCO as one of the eight biodiversity hotspots in the world and that includes a proposed tiger reserve. This project will undo so much that it can never be recovered, ”said Claude Alvares, an activist at the Goa Foundation who initiated litigation against all three projects at the Bombay Supreme Court and before a Supreme Court commission.
Indian law prohibits construction of wildlife sanctuaries, but the government has approved them in the public interest and future development of Goa. However, many believe that these three projects are part of a master plan to turn India’s smallest state into a corridor for a five-fold increase in coal imports by some of India’s biggest industrialists, known for their close ties to the governing party Bharatiya Janata (BJP).
Cumulatively, this will involve the diversion of 378 hectares (934 acres) of forest in Goa, cutting down 40,000 protected trees and removing more than 1.8 million tons of mud and land from inside the sanctuary.
Activists and citizens say that these projects were forced on Goa by the central government without any public consultation or transparency. They are now subject to a number of legal challenges and have spawned a grassroots opposition movement unlike anything seen in Goa for decades, with thousands of people taking to the streets in protest. Students, artists, biologists, tourism organizations and 150 scientists wrote to India’s environment minister, Prakash Javadekar, and to the supreme court asking for projects to be suspended, claiming that environmental laws were violated or ignored. More than 8,000 people participated in a recent demonstration and dozens were either arrested or arrested by the police.
“We are not saving Mollem forests just for their beauty, but for the very survival of life in Goa,” said artist Svabhu Kohli, who started the My Mollem campaign, which brought together artists, lawyers, researchers, biologists and local communities to increase the awareness through art and the impact that projects could have on Mollem.
“They say they are doing this to benefit the people of Goa. But everyone in Goa knows that Mollem has a special magic, so how can cutting irreplaceable forests be beneficial? And if it is for us, why have we never been consulted? “
Over the past three years, Goa’s main port, Mormugao Port Trust, in the north of the state, has expanded to become a center for imported coal. Since 2018, two of India’s largest coal importers, Adani and JSW, have established several terminals at the port.
In 2020, the Ministry of the Environment granted authorization for a third deepwater coal and dredging terminal to accommodate large coal ships. The port currently handles 12 million tons of coal, but importers expect to increase to 51 million tons by 2035.
Activists in Goa have linked coal imports to a reported increase in air pollution, lung disease and, more recently, an increase in Covid-19 deaths in villages near where the coal is unloaded and transported.
The coal arriving in Goa is not even used in the state, but is transported across the border to steel and power plants in neighboring Karnataka and Maharashtra.
However, as the master plan emphasized, for this long-term expansion plan to be viable, the old single-line railway from Goa and the winding road, which cut through Mollem to reach neighboring states, would need to be extended to deal with the heavy coal trucks and frequent freight trains needed to transport coal across the border. “This is the most important initiative and salvation for the port operation of the future,” says the master plan for duplicating the railway.
The expansion of the railway was the first of three controversial projects to earn the seal of approval from the National Wildlife Council (NBW), linked to the Ministry of Environment, in December 2019. The project, which involves cutting deep tunnels in the sanctuary and the turnaround of 1.8 million tons of soil was justified to meet future customer demand. But locals say the line is rarely busy.
The former head of the Goa Forestry Department, Richard D’Souza, originally refused to approve the railway project in 2013, as it was unnecessary and unjustifiably destructive to Mollem’s delicate biodiversity.
Mollem, Goa map
“I didn’t think it was appropriate for the railway to be duplicated in the sanctuary because I saw all these animals there with my own eyes, the black panther, bats, gauros and tigers, and biodiversity not found anywhere else,” said D ‘Souza. “It was also not necessary because there were not many passengers on that line.”
The government has commissioned an environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the project. However, it was done by an academic who is also part of the NBW government, who subsequently approved the railroad project in December 2019. “You can see how this is a total conflict of interest,” said Alvares.
“The duplication of the railway will be a disaster, there is no doubt about that,” added D’Souza. “The whole sanctuary is very steep and you will have to cut the land deeply and a large amount of cutting will be necessary. The famous Dudhsagar waterfall is close to the trails and must be damaged in the works. They must leave it as is; that will save the sanctuary, that will save wildlife, biodiversity, everything. “
The other two projects that will affect Mollem – the expansion of the road on a four-lane highway and the initial stages of a new electric power line – were approved in April by the NBW.
The central government’s green light for the projects generated outrage in Goa, and many were unaware that they were even in the pipeline due to what Nandini Velho, a Goa wildlife biologist, described as “a total information deficit and lack of transparency”.
Lawyer Sreeja Chakraborty accepted a legal challenge against the highway project for what she called “clear application discrepancies”. She pointed out that the EIA done for the highway specified that only one species of bird was found in Mollem. “A bird, in all 200 km2 of a wildlife sanctuary, when anyone passing through Mollem will see several species, including the national bird of Goa, the yellow-throat bulbul. This is just absurd and disgusting. But if you don’t record what’s there, nobody will know what’s lost, ”she said.
“They cannot defend the expansion of the road on the basis of traffic data, this is not supported,” said Chakraborty. “It is part of a multi-faceted attack on Goa to assist in the expansion of the coal port and at each step along the way we discover that the due procedure has not been followed.”
The state and central government are justifying the new power line, which will have six 22-meter high poles erected through Mollem, needed to bring electricity to remote areas of Goa and say it requires less than 0.25 hectares of land. The project has already started and, under the protection of the blockade in April, 20,000 trees on the edge of the sanctuary were cut down to make way for the power substation.
Activists say the power line will conveniently serve the interests of coal imports, supplying more power to the port and allowing train engines to be switched to electric ones, so they can operate more quickly, frequently and efficiently for future freight coal. “There is nothing in any document that connects the transmission line to the railway, but the situation on the ground is very clear,” said Chakraborty.
Subhash Chandra, the state government’s chief forest conservator, said the new elevated road would cut the time needed to cross the sanctuary in half. “We are taking all necessary measures to ensure that there is hardly any conflict with wildlife and to guarantee minimal damage to forests,” he said, emphasizing that a series of animal passages, underpasses and gates would be installed around the highway and railroad to avoid collisions. Environmentalists were scathing about this. “This is a forest, not a circus,” said Alvares. “Wild animals will not follow signs to cross a road safely.”
Defending all three projects, Chandra said: “This is to meet human, commercial and business needs. India is a developing country and our role in the forestry department is to balance conservation with development needs. The environment is not a static thing, nature has an incredible power to adapt and recover and the status quo cannot continue forever, Goa needs to make progress. “
The chief minister of the Goa BJP, Pramod Sawant, has repeatedly denied that any of these projects aimed at increasing coal transport capacity, describing them as a “national construction exercise” without “any threat to Mollem”. In November, he promised that coal imports to the Mormugao Port Trust would be reduced by 50% and said he had sought guarantees from the center that Goa would not become a coal center. The Adani Group has denied any participation in projects that affect Mollem.
Meanwhile, Salve Mollem protests and campaigns continue unabated in the villages and cities of Goa, inspiring a new generation of young Goans who have faced politicians and government officials in search of answers.
John Countinho, an environmentalist who was recently sued by the police for his involvement in the protests, said he feared that if the projects go ahead, they will “guarantee Goa as a coal corridor for years – which makes it unlikely that they will switch from coal to renewable, as they would like returns on their investments in coal infrastructure ”.
Kohli, the artist and activist, said the future of Goa’s ecology “is hanging by a thread.” “Goa had a beautiful ecologically diverse coast and because of greed and lack of vision, we lost a lot of our diversity,” he said. “We cannot let the same happen to Mollem.”