The Degeneration of the CRZ Notification

Editor’s Note: On October 16, 2024, the NGT Western Bench in Pune constituted a larger bench to hear the challenge to the CRZ Notification 2019. On November 11, 2024, the larger bench expanded the scope to include the coastal zone management authorities of all coastal states and Union territories. The larger bench will now be hearing the challenge to the CRZ 2019 on December 10, 2025.

IF ANY INDIAN STATE would stand to benefit from a strong coastal law, it is Goa. With its open seafront and numerous tidal rivers that criss-cross the land before draining into the Arabian Sea, Goa and its residents have lived in tune with this intricate and delicate ecology for centuries — proof of sustainable development, long before the term gained currency.

In 1972, the International Stockholm Conference took cognisance of the fact that urgent, immediate actions were required to protect the environment, if the planet were to survive with its biosphere. India played a lead role in the drafting of the 26 principles enshrined in the Stockholm Declaration. As a signatory to the Declaration, after 1972, the Parliament passed several laws to halt air and water pollution and protect its forests. These included the Water (Prevention & Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 and the Air (Prevention & Control of Pollution) Act, 1981. 

From Prohibition to Permits

In 1981, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi addressed the country’s beaches with a powerful gesture. She wrote a short 5-line letter to the Chief Ministers of the coastal states conveying her strong conviction that no development should be permitted within 500 metres of the High Tide Line in the interests of coastal protection. 

Although the courts later held that her letter was merely an executive fiat and not backed by statute, it nevertheless marked a turning point in the coast’s environment conservation history – the beginning of serious coastal protection measures which would culminate a decade later in the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification of 1991, issued under the all-pervasive Environment Protection Act, 1986. 

It is not too well known that Goa played a decisive role in giving birth to the CRZ statute. In 1988, a judgment by the Bombay High Court at Goa in Sergio Carvalho v. Union of India, which was concerned with the coastal violations of the Ramada International hotel under construction then at Varca, Salcette, Goa, was instrumental in hastening the introduction of the legal basis to the 500-metre restriction and other protective norms, including a 200-metre No Development Zone (‘NDZ’) and limits on heights of permissible constructions.

For two decades, this bold and forward-thinking law stood its ground, protecting the country’s (and Goa’s) fragile coasts from unchecked development. However, good laws often fall victim to bad politics. Unlike the Environment Impact Assessment Notification of 1994/2006, the 1991 CRZ notification both restricted and prohibited developmental activity, unless essentially connected with the coast. 

There were also soon several violations of its provisions. As tourism and real estate interests gained influence, there was pressure to relax some provisions and the Ministry of Environment & Forests made its first serious attempt in 1994 to dilute some of the notification’s provisions. These were struck down by the Supreme Court of India in its 1996 judgment – in a petition to challenge continuing violations – which was also responsible for ensuring that the Coastal Zone Management Plans mandatory under the notification were prepared and notified by September 1996.

On CRZ violations, the top Court made its most telling observation. It wrote: “Enactment of a law, but tolerating its infringement, is worse than not enacting law at all.”

In 2011, the Environment Ministry replaced the 1991 notification with a revised version. The 2011 edition created breaches, pushing the notification in the direction of an enabling statute, very similar to the EIA notification. Even before the numerous actions – specifically the preparation of Coastal Zone Management Plans – required under the 2011 notification could even be taken up, let alone completed, it was again replaced with a new version in 2019.

This 2019 CRZ Notification is a far cry from its 1991 predecessor. It undoes decades of environmental safeguards and stands today as a degenerate and perverse law, designed to do more harm than good. It is not only likely to wipe out all the positive conservation efforts of the past thirty years, it will also cause so much permanent damage to the coast that no further notifications may even be necessary. Not for nothing, a challenge against the CRZ 2019 notification is presently pending before the National Green Tribunal.

The first CRZ notification 

It is important to note that Mrs Gandhi’s 1981 letter was less than a page. The 1991 notification was a mere 5 pages. The 2019 notification extends over 27 pages. The truth is always simple. Once compromises are permitted, especially where there is no ecological sanction, the statute becomes increasingly complex, as the intent then becomes to allow and legitimize unwarranted actions and activity by any means. 

The CRZ Notification, 1991 had created a simple, effective regime. The 500-metre buffer zone from the High Tide Line was divided into four distinct categories – CRZ-I (ecologically sensitive, no development whatsoever); CRZ-II (developed urban areas – development prohibited only on the seaward side of existing authorised structures – based on the Doctrine of Tolerance and Containment); and CRZ-III (rural areas – within which certain types of construction were either restricted or outright banned). 

The coastal areas were categorised not just based on conservation needs, but on actual use as on the date of the notification. Further confirmation came with the notification of the Coastal Zone Management Plans (‘CZMPs’) in 1996. Crucially, the coast was no longer seen merely as vacant land (tabula rasa) waiting to be built upon. It was understood as a living system, one that had to be left undisturbed for the most part for its own integrity and for the people who depended on it.

As Dr. Antonio Mascarenhas, a noted NIO scientist, once noted, the 500-metre zone belongs not to human beings really, but to the sea. This space is required for the play of the ocean’s tidal forces, resulting in the movement of beach sands, dependent biodiversity and climate resilience. 

Being heavily dependent on the coast due to its unique geography, Goa was required to adhere strictly to the notification, if its local traditions and long history of khazan farming and riverine fishing were to survive. Goa needed to ensure that its natural barriers of mangroves and sand dunes continued to provide their unpaid services of simultaneously protecting the land from erosion and flooding. Breaches in bunds could easily devour the khazan lands and turn them into marshlands. A delicate balance between the land and the sea is what has kept Goa ‘green’ through the ages and made this tiny territory so attractive to the rest of India.  

The second CRZ notification 

The CRZ 2011 notification was built upon the foundation laid by CRZ 1991, seeking to address many of its alleged shortcomings. While CRZ 1991 was based on a strong consciousness of the need to protect coastal ecosystems, CRZ 2011 recognized the livelihood rights of traditional fishing communities as long-standing coastal dwellers. It continued the three primary zones of CRZ 1991 and added a new category, CRZ-IV, to govern activity in the coastal waters as well. It also introduced the Hazard Line, which was based on the inevitability of sea-level rise consequent on climate change. 

The 2011 notification also recognised the Goa coastal region as a “Special Area”, ensuring that Goa’s khazan lands, its shack culture and its ecologically sensitive habitats received special consideration for their environmental, historical, agricultural, and cultural value. 

Like CRZ 1991, the 2011 notification also required CZMPs to be drawn up through the involvement of local bodies and introduced a more structured system for project clearances. The law articulated what Goans have known intuitively for generations – that the law must take local communities, local traditions into confidence and not just the wisdom of latter-day environmental experts. There was, at least on paper, space for both coastal protection and sustainable livelihoods. In many ways, it improved upon the 1991 Notification. It was imperfect though – complicated, frequently litigated (a boon for lawyers), and often manipulated – but it still functioned as a conservation law.

The third CRZ notification

On January 18, 2019, the Government of India unveiled the CRZ 2019 notification, promising simplification, economic growth, and ease of the process of development. What it actually delivered was a systematic dismantling of environmental protection in favour of ease of construction and urbanisation. In effect, it took coastal protection several steps backward. The 2019 notification basically dismantled years of environmental safeguards that had protected fragile coastal ecosystems and traditional coastal communities. 

The 200-metre prohibited zone, the NDZ, which was once sacred under CRZ 1991 and maintained through CRZ 2011, was reduced to just 50 metres in many areas. The intertidal zone, which was previously protected, was opened up for construction (18 permissible activities). This move was hazardous and indefensible according to many scientists and environmentalists. The CRZ III category, which covered rural areas, was split into IIIA and IIIB. Partitioning the land on flimsy and arbitrary grounds enabled easy development in areas classified as NDZs in the past. CRZ 2019 brazenly altered even the meaning of the NDZ altogether by allowing construction even in these previously restricted areas.

Goa’s unique features protected by CRZ 2011 – the khazan lands, the named turtle nesting beaches – lost their protections. No reasons were offered. Turtle nesting beaches now risk being lost to noise, light, and shrinking safe zones. Even the 100-metre buffer along rivers was reduced to 50 metres, in blatant defiance of the 1996 Supreme Court ruling that had struck down this very relaxation.

The 2019 version also made another dangerous shift: from expert-based environmental scrutiny to state-level town and country planning regulations, which predictably tilt towards commercial development and favour construction and profit over preservation. This shift was especially dangerous in Goa, where fishing villages are already marginalised and under pressure, khazan systems are prone to tidal flooding and even a slight change in land use could have irreversible consequences. 

CRZ 2019 was projected as a reformist statute, but it shattered the trust built over decades between the law and local communities, between the state and the coast. It dislodged the Hazard Line (marking tidal ingress from sea level rise) from regulatory planning and undermined the precautionary principle approach introduced in 2011 in response to climate change and sea level rise risks. A law that was once envisioned to protect the coast has now been converted into an instrument for steady erasure of coastal assets, clearly signalling the Environment Ministry’s abandoning of its mandate to look after India’s coasts.

2019 CRZ: A legal and ecological contradiction

CRZ 2019 is a textbook example of the Doctrine of Non-Regression – a fundamental principle in environmental law which dictates that once protections are put in place, they must not be taken back. This principle is recognized in both international jurisprudence and by India’s courts and it reminds us that genuine progress does not come from weakening safeguards or moving backwards. 

CRZ 2019 also directly contradicts three foundational principles of environmental law which have been repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court:

• The Precautionary Principle, affirmed in the Vellore Citizens’ Welfare Forum case (1996) which insists that a lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as an excuse to delay action when there is a threat or apprehension of serious environmental damage. In other words, it is better to be safe than sorry when environment protection is at stake. 

• The Public Trust Doctrine, as upheld in MC Mehta v. Kamal Nath (1997), which holds that the state is not the owner but the trustee of natural resources. It has a duty to protect these resources for the benefit of the public and must not allow them to be alienated for private gain or commercial exploitation. 

• The Principle of Inter-Generational Equity which reminds us that the earth is not something we inherited from our ancestors to use up, but something we are in fact borrowing from future generations. We have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure that the environment we pass on is healthy, safe, and able to sustain life, just as it did for us. 

Together, these doctrines form the backbone of India’s environmental jurisprudence. Surprisingly, the scientific basis for the 2019 notification is also visibly absent. Though it cites the Shailesh Nayak Committee report, the final rules introduce several provisions that the Committee never recommended, without any transparent justification, scientific study, or environmental impact assessment. As cautioned by the Supreme Court, policy decisions made without a rational basis are not acts of governance but acts of abdication.

The Goa Challenge

There is still hope as the notification has not yet been implemented in Goa.  A challenge to it has been mounted by environmental organisations from Goa. Considering the significance of the challenge, in November 2024, a larger bench of the NGT issued notice to all the coastal states to respond. In October, it had ruled that the challenge would be heard by a larger bench of judges and experts from the Northern, Western, Southern and Eastern zones combined.

Goa’s coastline is not merely a physical boundary – it is a source of food, livelihood, culture and identity for countless communities. For centuries, people here lived in respectful harmony with the sea, based on the recognition that no one has ever won against the sea. Today, this ancient compact is being broken – not by a storm or natural calamity – but by the perversion of a legal instrument originally meant to safeguard it for posterity from unwarranted human interference. In the pursuit of unthinking development, we have already considerably harmed the sea and scarred the shores. 

We need to restore the truce – that is the need of the hour.