- The villages of Loliem and Poingunim in south Goa petitioned the union environment ministry, demanding they be included in the upcoming Eco Sensitive Areas notification.
- A proposed Film City on a laterite plateau in Loliem village could impact groundwater, residents say.
- The Goan government, meanwhile, is lobbying to reduce the number of villages declared as Eco Sensitive.
The residents of Loliem village in southern Goa are doing everything they can to control the fate of their lands. At a time when aspirations of development resemble urbanised smart cities, hundreds of residents in Loliem and other villages are going against the grain, instead demanding their villages be officially recognised – and protected – for their natural resources.
Loliem has all the hallmarks of a village rich in biodiversity, hosting ecosystems that have gradually been lost to land-grabs and changes in land use across the state. Located nearly two hours away from Panjim, in the Canacona taluka that borders Karnataka, the village is surrounded by lush forests and orchards at higher elevations. Further downhill, the slopes give way to paddy fields, mangrove forests, and the sea. There’s a keen interest from the government to integrate the area with the rest of the state, which is rapidly expanding its infrastructure to meet a burgeoning demand for luxury and tourist properties.
“The kind of development they want to bring here is unacceptable to us,” said Dennis Fernandes, flatly. Fernandes, 47, is a resident of Loliem where his family has lived for generations. “We are not against development, but we will not permit our lands to be opened up for big projects that will destroy our natural resources.”

The residents have pinned their hopes on a long-drawn bureaucratic exercise whose outcome could help seal their fate: the ongoing demarcation of the Western Ghats’ Eco Sensitive Areas (ESA).
The villages of Loliem and the neighbouring Poingunin petitioned the Union Environment Ministry last year, demanding they be included in the final ESA notification, which could offer some protection from large-scale infrastructure projects.
At stake is the Bhagwati Plateau, a laterite plateau often mistaken as barren land because of its dry, grassy appearance. But in the monsoon its surface blooms with several rare flora, and its porous rocks deliver the essential service of replenishing and storing groundwater. The plateau, part of the region governed by Loliem, is the site of a proposed Film City, helmed by the Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG), a body funded by the Goa government.
Negotiating eco sensitivity in Goa
When Kerala’s Wayanad district saw devastating landslides in July last year, environmental experts were quick to point out the need to officially notify Eco Sensitive Areas around the Western Ghats. Despite the recommendations of two expert committees, and a legal mandate under the Environment Protection Act of 1986, the ESA notification has remained in the drafting stage since 2013.
The purpose of the notification is to recognise that the Western Ghats are in need of special measures of protection, given that several areas are landslide prone. The draft notification recognises the region as “a treasure of biological diversity” which needs to be protected “while allowing for sustainable and inclusive development of the region.”

The central government released the sixth draft of the ESA notification a day after the Wayanad disaster, in July 2024, covering the key Western Ghats states – Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. But even after six rounds of drafting, states continue to push back, demanding fewer areas be declared as eco-sensitive as they have concerns over restrictions in infrastructure development and potential economic impact.
“Our goal is to remove as many villages as we can from the draft ESA notification,” Goa’s environment minister, Aleixo Sequeira told the local press on January 9. Months earlier, Goa’s chief minister, Pramod Sawant, said something similar. “Our effort will be to ensure maximum villages are dropped from the list.”
The Goa state government is lobbying to remove 21 out of 108 villages mentioned in the draft ESA notification in Goa. The notification prohibits industrial activity, mining, thermal power, and limits large scale construction in the ESA. Most of these proposed exclusions – 12 villages – are reportedly from the Sattari taluka in North Goa, a major site for iron ore mining.
Meanwhile, the possibility of being excluded from the ESA drove Loliem’s residents to appeal to the centre directly, even though the village features in the central government’s draft list. “Our village of Loliem is facing a disastrous assault from real estate speculation, luxury tourism, infrastructure projects and other forms of destruction,” reads the letter, which was sent to the Union Environment Ministry on September 24, 2024. “The low altitude lateritic plateaus, forests and the riverine wetlands… are under immediate assault and will be lost forever unless included in the Ecologically Sensitive Areas of Western Ghats,” the letter, signed by 341 residents, added. The neighbouring village of Poinguinim wrote its own petition seeking protection under the ESA, signed by another 318 residents.
In fact, the villages are demanding an even stricter enforcement of the ESA. They demand construction activities be limited to public necessities and the personal and livelihood needs of the local residents, “with specific bar on real estate speculation.” New constructions shouldn’t exceed 4,000 square meters (0.9 acre), says the letter. “We’ve seen how tourism and rampant development have ruined typical Goan villages. We don’t want that here,” said Fernandes.

At the request of the Goa government, a central committee, led by former Director General of Forests, Sanjay Kumar, visited the state in November 2024 to inspect some of the villages that the Goa government wants dropped.
A proposed film city in the Canacona coast
This isn’t the first time residents in Loliem have rallied together to preserve their land. In 2016, the government proposed setting up an Indian Institute of Technology in the village, which was eventually rescinded when residents refused to agree.
“Loliem is special because we have the plateau at the top, which absorbs water, followed by orchards and forest on the slopes, and then the khazan lands, rivers at sea level,” said Manoj Dutta Prabhugaonkar, chairman of Loliem’s Biodiversity Management Committee. “All these ecosystems are working together. If you remove the plateau or disrupt the water supply, it will lead to an imbalance across these ecosystems.”
The Biodiversity Management Committee was formed in the aftermath of the 2016 protests against the IIT campus and has since played a key role in keeping residents informed about the village’s natural resources.
“When we walk through our fields or pluck medicinal plants, we don’t think in terms of ‘biodiversity’ and ‘traditional knowledge,’’ said Sheweta Aiya, a resident who moved to Loliem after marriage more than 10 years ago. “For us, this is a way of life. But we learned these terms and this language when we understood the impact the IIT project could have on our village.”
It’s on the same grounds that residents are resisting the Entertainment Society of Goa’s pet project – a Film City that will boast production and special effects studios to complement the state’s enthusiasm for film. Goa has hosted the International Film Festival of India for 20 years, since 2004, and the Film City is said to have been a dream project for former chief minister Manohar Parrikar.

In 2023, the Entertainment Society of Goa sought 250 hectares of land to develop the Film City, which was offered by the Loliem’s Comunidade – a group of the village’s landed elite who control common lands. The Comunidade system is a relic of Goa’s pre-colonial past, where gaunkars – the first settlers of the village – took ownership of agricultural and common lands and leased them out as a land management strategy. “It also evolved systems of shareholding for occupancy rights as long as it was focused on maintaining productivity in the village and no one traded the land,” write Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava, founders of the platform urbz, which specialises in participatory urbanism, design and governance.
The Comunidade system was codified by the Portuguese during its occupation of the state from the 16th century till 1961, and continues to survive today alongside the Panchayat system, which was brought to Goa after it was integrated with the rest of India. But the co-existence of these two systems has complicated the land use and ownership of common land in places like Loliem, where the Comunidade and Panchayat are at loggerheads. “It is not a question of just land use, but of holistic development of taluka as it will result in employment generation besides of course nurturing local talent,” Vishwajit Varik, president of Loliem’s Comunidade, said when the decision to hand over the land was made.
In November 2023, following the Comunidade’s announcement, the Loliem village Gram Sabha – a village convening under the Panchayat system – passed a resolution opposing the Film City. “The Loliem-Polem gram panchayat shall take all steps to conserve the (Bhagwati) plateau and prevent the grant of Comunidade lands for the purpose of the Film City or any other purpose,” says the resolution. The motion was supported by around 204 residents in attendance at the time.

But the power of the Gram Sabha’s resolution over Comunidade’s decision is uncertain, said Alankanada Shringare, Professor of Public Administration at Goa University. The Comunidade has agreed to lease 250 hectares of land for 99 years to the ESG. “There are several other acts that could override a Gram Sabha’s resolution. The Town and Country Planning department is the main agency that decides on matters regarding land use,” she told Mongabay India.
Loliem’s protesting residents could take refuge in the final ESA, if included, which prohibits industrial processes like mining and the construction of new townships over 50 hectares, as well as new projects with a built-up area exceeding 20,000 square meters (4.9 acres) in size. “The Comunidade says that the Film City project will lead to employment in the village, but we’ve seen with the National Institute of Technology in Cuncolim that jobs are contracted to outsiders,” said a teacher residing in Loliem and working in a government school. “Instead, all our natural resources, especially our water, will deplete,” the teacher added. He did not wish to be named fearing retaliation from his employers.
It’s more than just the Comunidade’s decision that is working against the protesting residents. A series of changes to Goa’s land policies, helmed by the Town and Country Planning Department (TCP), have made it easier to change the status of green land zones into settlement areas, which can then be developed for residential and semi-residential purposes.
Over a span of 15 months, between 2023 and 2024, the government approved the conversion of 21.29 lakh square metres of orchards, paddy fields, and no-development slopes into residential areas, according to media reports based on information from the state assembly. Among the beneficiaries of the converted parcels is a company in which TCP Minister Vishwajeet Rane and his wife are the directors, reveal media reports.

A plateau that regulates water
Legend has it that Bhagwati Devi – the deity that presides over the Bhagwati plateau – was carried to Loliem from Karnataka. A small temple dedicated to her has stood on the plateau for at least 500 years, according to residents. The Bhagwati plateau is a 40,000 square meter expanse capped with laterite – residual soil and sedimentary rock with a reddish hue.
Laterite rocks and plateaus are common across Goa – a mapping study shows there are 10 main laterite plateaus running along the state’s coast. But these rocky outcrops are vanishing because of rampant development.
Most famously, the Manohar International Airport built in Mopa village sits atop one of the laterite plateaus, the Pernem plateau. Since the building of the airport, local residents have complained about water gushing down the hill slopes and causing flooding downstream during the monsoon.
The Central Groundwater Board’s 2020 assessment of groundwater in Goa said that laterites were “important water bearing formations in the state,” whose topographic conditions controlled for groundwater potential. The porous surface of the rocks can help catch water and let it percolate through the surface underground, replenishing wells with groundwater on the hillslopes.

The residents are acutely aware of the groundwater services provided by the plateau, particularly when resources run dry. Loliem village often faces water scarcity January onwards, well after the monsoon season is over. The nearby Chapoli dam doesn’t supply water to Loliem, making irrigation difficult in the hot months.
Major changes in the monsoon have added to fluctuations in water supply. According to the India Meteorology Department (IMD), while mean annual rainfall has increased over Goa by 68% between 1990 and 2018, moderate and light rainfall days have decreased sharply from 1901 to 2015, replaced by heavy and extreme rainfall days.
“We are never completely starved of water – we have water to drink. But it becomes difficult to irrigate our fields after January,” said Parshuram Aiya, a pandit (priest) by profession. “Imagine if we lose the plateau and suddenly there’s an influx of thousands of people here, we will have to depend on water tankers entirely.” Aiya, along with Fernandes, voluntarily cleared soil off a patch of the plateau’s rocky face to facilitate groundwater percolation.
The draft ESA notification recognises laterite plateaus as being among the Western Ghat’s unique ecosystems, but Ashish Prabhugaonkar, a Loliem native and Assistant Professor of botany at the Dhempe College of Arts and Science, Panaji, laments that there’s no push from the state government to accord them similar recognition. “These lateritic plateaus are not just flat tabletops. They have uneven surfaces made of laterite that are shallow in some places and form puddles in others, with patches of soil in between. All these are microhabitats,” he told Mongabay-India.

Around 100 endemic species have been found in the low-lying coastal laterite plateaus across the Western Ghats, meaning they don’t exist in other habitats, said Rutuja Kolte, a faculty at the Govindram Seksaria Science College in Belgaum. Most of these endemic species bloom in the monsoon season, when the bare-faced rocky appearance of the plateau transforms into a vibrant bed of grass and flowering plants. “These plateaus are also like seed banks for this unique vegetation,” she said.
Both Ashish Prabhugaonkar and Kolte have discovered new endemic plant species in Goa’s laterite plateaus, such as the Dipcadi goanese, the Canscora shrirangiana, and Cuscuta janarthanamii. Kolte discovered a new species, Eriocaulon goaense, as recently as 2022.
“Authorities everywhere are recognising sand dunes, mangroves, and wetlands as unique ecosystems, so why not laterite plateaus?” asked Ashish Prabhugaonkar. “Our laterite plateaus need unique rules and regulations when it comes to development,” he added.
Banner image: Parshuram Aiya looks inside his well in his home in Loliem, Goa. Image by Simrin Sirur.