When young Arturo D’Souza and his friends would take their cows and buffaloes to the Bondvol lake to bathe, the melodic sounds of a multitude of birds filled the air. Bondvol, a 110-year-old natural reservoir in Goa, built during the Portuguese times, was the source of water for the village of Santa Cruz. It was also rich in biodiversity. “We used to end up jumping into the water ourselves along with our cattle. The Bondvol waters were used for providing water to the fields,” says D’Souza, now 54 years old, with the memory of those times still fresh as ever.

As the bird song started to fade away, it dawned on D’Souza that the lake that lay in his backyard needed saving. It was 2016 when D’Souza went to the lake that sits atop a hill and noticed that it was completely dry. It was evident that it was human intervention that led to the drying of the lake and some builder wanted to build a ‘lake view’ project there. The childhood sounds of the birds resounding in his ears, he took the decision to do something about it. “If I cannot do something for this region, then what was the point of my having had those experiences in my childhood,” he said.

A citizen movement, “Save Bondvol Lake”, with D’Souza as a key member, started that year to save the heritage lake. Then, in 2017, the community went to courts and D’Souza too filed a public interest petition to seek protection for the lake. The citizen efforts over the years are now close to fruition as Bondvol lake is set to get “wetland” status.

Mobilising the community

D’Souza, a former English and History teacher, had turned full-time social activist in 2015 – around the same time that large builders were taking over land in Goa for infrastructure projects. When two salt pans near Santa Cruz, were nearly filled up in preparation for building construction, he took the lead and got the construction put on hold. When he started off, D’Souza admits, he felt clueless and alone in his efforts. But it was Father Bismarque Dias, a Goan Catholic activist priest in Goa who connected him with an advocate and many other social activists who helped bring the construction activities to the desired close. Fr. Bismarque was his initial propeller into the “social work scene”, as he casually refers to it, and since then, D’Souza hasn’t looked back.

In saving the Bondvol lake, help in mobilising other members of the community once again came from his church parish. Over three thousand people were involved in the citizen movement, with a lot of them already opposed to the fact that Santa Cruz had been made part of the Planning and Development Authority (PDA), a move that would have sped up urbanisation in the Goan villages. Clubbing the Bondvol lake issue with this helped unite people against a common cause.

A large meeting at the public ground, Azad Maidan, in April 2018, was attended by over 4000 people coming in from a number of places that had been included in the PDA and were against it. The group didn’t leave any stone unturned in their protests – bike rallies, peaceful marches, meetings, a deep environmental understanding of the area and more.

Ecologist and Goan scholar Nandkumar Kamat, an ally in the movement, believed that this fight was not going to be easy and extended immense support in the form of connections from the academic space who could help strengthen the case exploring the hydrological and biodiversity-related aspects. Professor A.G. Chachadi, one such academician from the Department of Earth Sciences of the Goa University joined the task force too. “We had tremendous support from everywhere,” says a humble D’Souza who insists that the entire team did it together.

Read more: A Goan village is on the brink of victory to conserve a century-old lake

Victory for Bondvol

One of the aspects that helped Santa Cruz village make a strong case and eventually attain victory is the comunidade system – the Portuguese handed-down, comunidade system of land-holding is unique to Goa. Such land is collectively held and cared for by the community which consists of the ‘sons of the soil’, Goans. Officially, the Calapor comunidade owned the Bondvol lake land. In 2017, the Calapor comunidade had moved the Bombay High Court’s Goa bench to seek protection for Bondvol Lake. Arturo D’Souza also filed a public interest petition in the High Court in 2017. As a united group, they were able to win back what was rightfully theirs.

Now, Bondvol is soon to be notified as a wetland, which will help gain additional environmental protection for their community asset. Pradip Sarmokadam, Member Secretary, Goa State Wetland Authority (GSWA) and strong supporter of the efforts of the citizens, shares, “The process of identification of wetlands across the state has begun. We will be looking at 35 wetlands this year, Bondvol is part of the first 10 we have evaluated. My team at the GSWA is working very closely with the scientists of the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), who are looking into all the technical aspects of the guidelines for wetland identification.”

After the success of saving Bondvol lake, D’Souza continues to challenge the system by highlighting public interest issues. Armed with his mobile phone, D’Souza takes pictures and videos of the problems ailing Goa’s environment and shares them among his network to raise awareness and urge citizens to hold the state leaders accountable.