Raising concern over rapid growth of tourism making light of Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) regulations in coastal Goa, climate scientist Rajendra K. Pachauri on Saturday highlighted the role of whistle-blowers and activists in ensuring not only strict enforcement of these regulations but also generating public awareness among the people.

Delivering the first late Matanhy Saldanha Memorial Foundation lecture here on Saturday on “Environment: a gift to mankind to be sustainably used and conserved for future generations”, Mr. Pachauri said, “Goa is very vulnerable to large number of impacts of climate change and consequent rise in sea level,” and went on to warn that if CRZ norms were not implemented strictly, the coastal State could be in big trouble.

He said that that vulnerable States such as Goa need not wait for a calamity to happen — every time a storm splurge and flooding took place, its impact Goa’s coastline would be very high and could cause enormous damage.

Taking cognizance of presence of Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar at the function, Mr. Pachauri hailed him for focussing on innovative solutions like green rating for buildings, proposing to work on incentivising and disincentivising the construction sector based on ratings.

He said that it was time coastal areas such as Goa adopted carefully orchestrated and intelligently debated model of development, which was not only good for State but would also ensure that natural resources remained as gift available to next generation in their pure natural form.

Expressing concern over the widening economic disparities in the country, the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) blamed adoption and continued pursuing of only materialistic form of development where the privileged and advantaged cornered a large share of development and those on the margins continued to be further marignalised. He said that climate change affected the latter, who were more vulnerable. He called for innovative solutions to adapt to the impact of climate change and efforts by global societies to cut their carbon footprints.

He called for systematic efforts to harness renewable energy use and felt that with the prices of alternative energy coming down rapidly, he hoped hat in the next five years this energy would become very competitive.