Goa’s green design warriors Part II – Gerard da Cunha

02/08/2024 0 Comments read Environment & Development, Travel

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 02.08.2024 (The Hindu): Gerard da Cunha’s quest to discover his roots led him to Goa at the impressionable age of 19. His maternal grandparents had moved to Lahore and his paternal grandparents to Mumbai. His father worked in a bank and so they lived in various cities, wherever he was posted. During summer vacations, they would visit one set of grandparents, but never Goa.

He instantly fell in love with the place, especially it’s architecture, and decided to make Goa his home as soon as it were possible. After graduating from the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi and working in the national capital for few years, he felt it was time to set up his architectural practice in Goa in 1984.

He was intrigued by the Indo-Portuguese house, which harmoniously blends the double-storey rural Portuguese house and the traditional Goan house designs. He began documenting and photographing these houses, and published the seminal Houses of Goa book written by Heta Pandit and Annabel Mascarenhas in 1999. Around the same time, he held an exhibition of Goan houses in Panjim, which travelled to Lisbon and Porto, Mumbai and Delhi.

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Goa’s green design warriors Part III – Arminio Ribeiro

02/08/2024 0 Comments read Environment & Development, Travel

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 02.08.2024 (The Hindu): Arminio Ribeiro’s ancestral home, built by his grandfather in 1915, is a stone’s throw from the whitewashed Saint Sebastian chapel in Fontainhas – Goa’s oldest Latin quarter, tucked away from the din of the capital city, Panjim. He returned to this home of his birth in 2000, drawn by the familiar neighborhood and its close-knit community.

“It was like returning to a large joint family with its share of fun and occasional friction”, says Ribeiro, whom I meet in the rear part of the house, which has been his office since 1996.

Many families, like Ribeiro’s, have resided for generations in Fontainhas, which was originally part of Talegaon village. It is only around mid-19^th century, with the administration relocating to Panjim from Old Goa, that urbanization plans began to take shape, connecting residential and work areas.

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Blue economy must benefit fishing communities in Global South: WorldFish Chief

07/06/2024 0 Comments read Climate Change, Environment & Development, Health & Science

Dr Essam Yassin Mohammed, Director-General of WorldFish and CGIAR's Senior Director of Aquatic Foods. Photo Credit: ©WorldFish

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 07.06.2024 (IPS): The Global South is crucial for ensuring aquatic food security to feed the growing world population. It is imperative that blue economy initiatives benefit fishing communities in developing and small island nations, which are facing disproportionate impacts of climate change, says Dr Essam Yassin Mohammed, Director General of WorldFish, an international non-profit research organization based in Penang, Malaysia.

“More than three billion people depend on aquatic foods as their main source of protein and micronutrients, and nearly 800 million people rely on fishing for their livelihood. The Global South produces a significant portion of the world’s aquatic food and 95 percent of the fishing workforce comes from these regions,” notes Mohammed, who is also CGIAR’s Senior Director of Aquatic Food Systems.

Growing up in Eritrea’s capital, Asmara, situated on a highland plateau 2325 meters above sea level, Mohammed learned the value of food early in life. The country had recently gained independence from Ethiopia in 1991, and young children like him were motivated to contribute to the nation’s food security.

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