Tourism concerns

Tourism Concern, a London network
drawing attention to the rights of
people living in the tourist hotspots
of the world, recently publiclsed
Goa's tourism problems in the UK's
mainstream media. The group's coordinator Tricla Barnett said to Down
To Earth that it hadbeen 'telling tour
operatort...for several years" that
there were "continuing violation of
local environmental regulations and
people's rights' caused by Goa's tourism sector.

It charged cash-hungry hotel
owners, for slowly "poisoning" Goa's
fragile ecology. It highlighted recent
official reports which only confirmed
the campaigners' 8-year-long claims.

A British Broadcasting Corporation programme suggested that
Goa could become a 65 km-strip of
"hotels and development indistinguishable from Thailand, Miami
Beach or Beniclorm" within a decade.

Recently, campaigners against
Goa's haphazard tourism grow1h
have elicited'concerns from severil
internatitinal groups which the Goa
Foundation - an environmentalist
gro up - finds very helpful. Late last
year, a committee formed by the
Union environment and forests ministry named several p1rinent hotels
for rampant coastal tonstruction
especially along the scenic-calangut ,e coastal belt.