Act for Goa gets Felicitated
Posted on 08/12/2022[totaldonations]
Actforgoa has run in conjunction with Museum of Goa a 6 part series of discussions on topical environmental issues. These discussions have brought diverse and inter-disciplinary panels together to understand problems and threats to Goa as well as opportunities and ways of tackling these challenges. They have been interactive in nature and information and views have been gathered and recorded to inform future action by Actforgoa and partners. The proceedings of the events have been recorded and publicised through the local newspapers to magnify impact.
The topics have been:
A brief account of these dialogues are set out on brief below.
Lecture 1: Sustainable Tourism: 10th October
This talk explored the challenges facing Goa in relation to tourism, what a truly sustainable model of tourism looks like, and what may be needed by the different actors involved.
Act for Goa working with MOG brought together Mr. Mahesh Patil, Chair of the Goa State Pollution Control Board (in a personal capacity); Parag Rangnekar, Director of Mrugaya Expeditions and Member of Goa Tourist Board; Puja Mitra, Director of Terra Conscious; and Nester Brian Fernandes Project Co-ordinator, Marine Life of Goa and founder of Canopy by the Coast. They engaged in conversation with Maya de Souza, Co-Director of Act for Goa to explore critical questions.
This interactive discussion surfaced the changes required from tourists, the hospitality sector, and local communities to ensure that our local environment was safeguarded. It concluded with a short note harvesting the learning from the morning. This note will be used by AfG as it designs a project on sustainable tourism.
Lecture 2: Managing Goa’s Waste
We explored why Goa is failing in its management of waste, and what societies, panchayats and hotels can do to turn things around.
To discuss this issue, we brought together: Wilma Rodrigues, co-founder, Sahaas Zero Waste; Clinton Vaz – Waste Management Entrepreneur and founder of vRecycle Waste Management Services; Jill Ferguson – co-founder of Act for Goa and CEO of Vayu Hotel; Sumita Ghosh – social entrepreneur
The output from the event is a call to action to these 3 sets of players and factsheets have been prepared.
Lecture 3: Spiritualism, Art and Ecology
We explored how we can draw emotional strength and personal resilience as well as a bring people together, through art and spiritualism as we work on the challenge of safeguarding our precious ecological systems.
Our speakers/panelists were renowned ecologist and campaigner Rajender Kerkar and artists Miriam Koshy and Waylon D’Souza, and Fr Valerian Vaz from the Pilerne Seminary. They took us through the inspiration behind their works from Sateri and sacred groves to installation art and the Seminary’s experiments on water management.
We are exploring how to build on this initial discussion including the possibility of practical work at MOG to sustain us emotionally and give us inner strength through creative action.
Lecture 4: Conscious Planning
This event explored how we can address the challenge of protecting our natural environment whilst also supporting prosperity and jobs in Goa, in the face of accelerating and largely unplanned construction activity in Goa.
It brought together architects, geospatial data experts, and panch members to explore what is currently being done and what can be done better.
A visual diagram reflecting the challenges and the action needed was prepared and uploaded to our website to enable further discussion.
Lecture 5: The Blue Economy – safeguarding our marine environment
This event explored the threats and challenges to our marine environment as well as opportunities and solutions, such as in growing and restoring coral and promoting eco-related activities such as scuba diving.
It brought together Dr Ravindran, National Institute of Oceanography, Sinjini Chanda and Prashant Vaze, Blue Bonds Incubator.
The findings included the potential to grow coral in Goa, the ecosystem benefits of doing so, and actions which may help reduce damage such as managing wastewater effluent into marine areas. The need to ensure that eco-tourism is carefully managed to avoid disease being spread that kills coral was also noted.
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