A Hilton Luxury Resort Closes In on Goa’s Sand Dunes
This story is produced by The Xylom and co-published by Frontline, an Indian fortnightly magazine. Subscribe to Frontline here.
VARCA, India – Waves crash against the white sands of Varca, a beach town in South Goa, India.
Unlike much of Goa’s crowded coastline, where tourism infrastructure has crept to the water’s edge, this stretch remains quiet and open. Sand dunes, some up to six metres (19.7 feet) high, rise along the beach, supporting vegetation adapted to saline conditions. Parts of the State’s sandy ecosystem date back 6,000 years.
Today, these dunes face a threat. In February 2026, the American hotel and resort company Hilton announced the signing of a 148-room Waldorf Astoria Goa, slated to open by 2030 — even though the project is yet to obtain environmental clearance from the Goa State Environment Impact Assessment Authority.
Waldorf Astoria Goa is located at Survey No. 125/1-A in Varca. The survey number covers the area where the dunes are located, according to records reviewed by The Xylom.
On Amche Atlas, an open-source, volunteer-driven mapping project, the Waldorf Astoria Goa overlaps with dunes recorded in the Goa Coastal Zone Management Plan. Shohail Furtado, an activist from Varca, identified the site as a 20-acre property along Zalor beach and says a significant portion overlaps the dunes.
A luxury resort was proposed on the same site before. The project received “in-principle” approval from the Goa Investment Promotion and Facilitation Board, but it was revoked after the board was found to lack jurisdiction to permit projects in Coastal Regulation Zone areas. The developers approached the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority again in 2019, but no further approvals are publicly available. It is unclear whether the Hilton project is a continuation of the earlier proposal. The Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority did not respond to requests for comment.
Waldorf Astoria Goa raises several questions about its ownership. It is registered to West Coast Hotels Pvt. Ltd., a joint venture between the V.S. Dempo Group, a prominent Goan business group which has faced allegations of environmental violations, and Triton Hotels & Resorts Private Limited. Pallavi Dempo, the executive director of the Dempo Group, contested the 2024 general election from South Goa as a candidate for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, losing by more than 13,000 votes in a competitive race.
Some Varca residents worry that the family’s political connections could make it easier to secure environmental clearances.
"How can we expect an authority whose role is simply to grant approvals without necessary expertise to make balanced decisions?" asks Elsa Fernandes, an environmental architect and member of the Goa State Wetland Authority. "The decisions will be skewed towards economic interests over those of protecting the environment.
In an email response, a Hilton spokesperson says, "We recognise the importance of preserving the natural environments that make destinations like Goa unique and are working with the development's owners to deliver a resort that creates long-term value for guests, communities and stakeholders while respecting the unique environmental setting that makes Goa so distinctive."
The Xylom reached out to the Goa State Environment Impact Assessment Authority, the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority and the Dempo Group but received no response by the time of publication.
Dunes, a Natural Buffer Zone
Waldorf Astoria Goa is just one example. Since Goa’s tourism boom in the 1970s, stretches of dunes have been flattened to make way for resorts, hotels, and shacks.
“As a child, I used to climb up the dunes and roll down their slopes. The ones at my mother’s village in Velsao used to be double in size, almost 10 metres high.” — Shohail Furtado, a youth activist in Goa
“Developing on dunes may provide short-term financial benefits, but with rising sea levels, communities will become increasingly vulnerable,” writes Timothy Baxter, a physical geographer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in an email response to The Xylom. Baxter co-authored a paper titled “Significant Coastal Dune Loss Challenges California’s Climate Resilience and Biodiversity Goals” in 2026, published in Earth’s Future.
Sand dunes act as natural barriers between the ocean and land, protecting coastal areas from storms and waves while helping prevent saltwater from entering freshwater sources.
“Coastal dunes often provide the first line of defense against coastal flooding and erosion,” Baxter explains. “Unlike engineered coastal defenses, coastal dunes naturally migrate inland in response to sea level rise and are therefore able to adapt to climate change impacts. The degradation of dunes reduces the natural capacity of coastal systems to respond.”
A study published in the Journal of Environmental Management after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Tamil Nadu found that coastal sand dunes and casuarina forests helped reduce the impact of tsunami waves. The researchers observed minimal overwash in areas with high dune complexes and noted that the greatest destruction occurred along open beachfronts heavily altered by human activity. A 2025 study published in Nature shows that rapid warming of the Arabian Sea from 1980 to 2023 over the last decade has intensified tropical cyclone activity, making India’s west coast, where Goa is located, increasingly susceptible to cyclones.
Elsa Fernandes estimates that 30–50% of Goa’s sand dunes have been degraded or altered. But few official studies exist since, according to Fernandes, researchers who venture into these areas can come into “direct conflict with the authorities”
“Whether you're a local fisherman or an expert who has spent years studying sand dunes, there is broad agreement that Goa's dunes are in poor shape.” — Elsa Fernandes, environmental architect
Fernandes says that inadequate mapping is an obstacle to protecting Goa's dunes. In cases before the National Green Tribunal, the statutory body that handles environmental disputes, developers have argued that dunes do not exist because they are absent from official records, weakening their legal protection.
"Last year, three sand dunes in Varca were destroyed," Furtado says. He has been spotlighting environmental violations in South Goan villages on social media.
Under India’s Coastal Regulation Zone rules, sand dunes receive the highest level of protection as ecologically sensitive areas. The reality in Goa is contradictory, though. “A hotel brand comes into the picture only when the project is complete and ready to operate,” says Fernandes. “Between the proposal and the opening, there are several stakeholders involved who may not necessarily be sensitive to sand dunes.”
But the hotel’s announcement is not the only sign of development taking shape around the site. In late 2025, local authorities cleared a 10-metre-wide road adjacent to the proposed site. The road overlapped with sand dunes, damaging them in the process. While authorities maintained that the road was intended to benefit traditional fishermen, villagers allege that it was cleared in the interest of real estate development, possibly linked to the proposed luxury hotel.
In a 2025 case before the National Green Tribunal (NGT) involving a proposed hotel in Cavelossim, Goa, residents alleged that construction had damaged the sand dunes. A GCZMA inspection recorded about 1,100 sq m of damaged dunes, based on the draft Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP) maps. However, the case also raised discrepancies between the draft and final CZMP mapping of the dune area. The NGT's 2025 judgment, using the final CZMP and a subsequent site assessment, found 322 sq m of road within the mapped dune area and ordered that portion restored. The developer disputed that it had damaged the dunes.
Future Planning
Two more resorts are planned along the same stretch, one adjacent to the proposed Hilton site and another further north, linked to the Raheja family of Mumbai. At the Raheja site, the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority has directed offenders to restore a damaged dune after Furtado filed a complaint on behalf of the Varca villagers.
“Varca already houses eight large premium resorts,” Furtado says. “The village simply doesn't have the capacity for more.”
A 2016 beach-carrying-capacity study by the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management reported that no additional structures — such as shacks, huts, tents, and cottages — should be permitted in the area. Citizens’ groups in Varca have been demanding that their local panchayats conduct a village carrying capacity study. Goa attracts more than six times its resident population in visitors, and concerns about overtourism and the strain on natural resources are growing.
The loss of sand dunes is not unique to Goa. A 2022 study published in Geology, Ecology, and Landscapes found that most coastal dunes near Cuddalore had been destroyed due to human pressure and unplanned development, with changes of more than 100 hectares per year between 2003 and 2020. On the other side of the globe, more than a century ago, the leveling of what was the American state of Indiana’s largest sand dune, Hoosier Slide, for glass fruit jars and later a power plant, spurred the creation of the Indiana Dunes National Park, decades later. California has lost 60% of its coastal sand dunes over the past 165 years, affecting the state’s ability to adapt to climate change. In heavily urbanised coastal areas, like Los Angeles and San Francisco, more than 95% of the original dunes have been erased to make way for expanding cities.
Dune degradation has deeper impacts. "Because the dunes have been cut, there is nothing to stop seawater during the monsoon," Furtado says. "When the sea rises, seawater enters the nullah and pushes it outwards, leading to minor flooding."
In 2020, the World Bank sanctioned Rs.3 crore ($400,000) to develop sand dune parks in Goa’s Morjim and Galgibaga — they do not yet exist. While international agencies recognise the ecological value of these dunes, weak enforcement of environmental laws and opaque decision-making by the government authorities continue to put them at risk along Goa’s coastline.
