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Current Editorial
The ecologically subsidised city: on Kolkata's
wetland communities
If ever there was someone who
lived true to his name, it was Dhrubajyoti Ghosh. In Sanskrit, “Dhrubajyoti”
refers to the light (jyoti) emitted by the pole star (dhruva tara).
The ecologist, who passed away in February, was unwavering in his commitment to
the cause he lived for and fearlessly defended: saving the ecologically
critical East Kolkata Wetlands from the greed of developers for almost four
decades, right up until his passing away.
Rural ecological wisdom
What Ghosh discovered
serendipitously, as a public sanitation engineer in the early 1980s, was that
Kolkata’s wastewater is introduced into and detained in shallow waterbodies (bheris in
Bengali) which serve as oxidation ponds because of the presence of algae. Under
the open tropical sun, the water undergoes change, getting comprehensively
treated and cleaned as the bacteria disintegrate and the algae proliferate,
serving as food for fish. The treated water is used by villagers in the area to
grow vegetables and paddy.
The beauty of what Ghosh
discovered is that these villagers have been following such sane ecological
practices for many decades without any help from the State, and well beyond the
gaze of the media. It suggests remarkable ecological wisdom on the part of
largely illiterate villagers, based on knowledge of local conditions and
wetland hydrology.
Thanks to his dedicated work, the
125 sq km area of the wetlands were
recognised internationally in 2002 as a ‘Ramsar site’, or a wetland of
international significance, which made it incumbent by both the State and the
Central governments to protect them from invasive encroachments.
To the untrained eye, wetlands
are easily and frequently mistaken to be wasteland, a point of view that shows
remarkable ecological ignorance. Greater Kolkata, with a population of more
than 14 million people, is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world.
A growing population of this size in a developing economy puts huge pressures
on the infrastructure, sanitation being foremost among them.
Nature at work
Kolkata is fortunate to be home
to the world’s largest organic ‘sewage treatment plant’, the wetlands.
Unobserved by the rest of the world, sun-fed algae and the bacteria in the
sewage perform this wondrous function.
A conservative estimate of this
great service being performed quietly by nature would give us this data: the
capacity to treat 750 million litres of wastewater per day. In monetary terms
it would be over $25 billion (₹162,500 crore)
annually.
But this is only one part of it.
These wetlands are also home to a wide variety of aquatic life, vegetation, and
hundreds of species of birds. Moreover, after nature’s organic treatment, the
sewage that drains into the wetlands results in 55,000 tonnes of vegetables and
paddy and 10,000 tonnes of fish annually, giving a community of 100,000 people
a livelihood. In effect, the wastewater works as a costless fertilizer to
produce cheap food for what Ghosh called an “ecologically subsidised” city.
Because these invaluable benefits
cannot be calculated, they are often brushed aside in the calculations of
developers. No textbook of development economics in India or elsewhere talks
about “the developer’s model of development”, the one that is actually the
dominant understanding of development at work across 21st century India.
In 2005, the UN Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment found ecological degradation to be more prominent within
wetlands than any other ecosystem on Earth.
Dhrubajyoti Ghosh recognised this
and did more than perhaps any other individual in creating public awareness in
India about the need to conserve its wetlands. His efforts were recognised
internationally, when he was named, in 1990, as a UN Global 500 Roll of Honour
laureate. In 2016, he received the prestigious CEM Luc Hoffmann Award from the
International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Ghosh was an ecologist, not an
environmentalist. Based on his close observations of wetland communities and
their organically renewable livelihoods, he argued for several new concepts
relevant to ecological pedagogy and policy-making. For him, the environment was
not a mere after-thought in the operations of a market economy; and the
forgotten natural world was no mere ‘resource’. Such a perspective illustrates
the holistic quality that an ecologist brings to his vision and work. Ghosh was
that sort of a man.
Aseem Shrivastava, a writer
and ecological thinker, is the the author (with Ashish Kothari) of ‘Churning
the Earth: The Making of Global India’
XXX
Older Editorial
Missing
the wetlands for the water
The government is all set to
change the rules on wetlands. The Draft Wetlands (Conservation and Management)
Rules, 2016, which will replace the Wetland (Conservation and Management) Rules
of 2010, seek to give power to the States to decide what they must do with
their wetlands. This includes deciding which wetlands should be protected and
what activities should be allowed or regulated, while making affable calls for
‘sustainability’ and ‘ecosystem services’.
On the face of it, this appears
to favour decentralisation and federalism. But the peculiar reality of wetlands
shows that local pulls and pressures are not the best determinants for their
protection. Both water in liquid form and wetlands in the form of ‘land’ are
hotly contested, making wetlands the most imperilled natural ecosystem
worldwide. It is imperative that the Draft Wetlands Rules, 2016 (comments for
which close today) be looked at with a hard, if not cynical, eye. Three issues
are of immediate concern. First, the draft does away with the Central Wetlands
Regulatory Authority, which had suo moto cognisance of wetlands and
their protection. Second, the draft rules contain no ecological criteria for
recognising wetlands, such as biodiversity, reefs, mangroves, and wetland
complexes. And finally it has deleted sections on the protection of wetlands,
and interpretation of harmful activities which require regulation, which found
reference in the 2010 rules.
Experiments with water systems
One of the biggest ironies around
water is that it comes from rivers and wetlands, yet it is seen as divorced
from them. While water is used as a resource or good, public policy does not
always grasp that it is part of a natural ecosystem. Efforts at engineering
water systems are thus efforts at augmenting water supply rather than
strengthening the capacities of ecological systems. There have been many recent
attempts at this sort of engineering — Karnataka had dredged its rivers, for
instance; other States may follow suit. The Ken and Betwa rivers in Madhya
Pradesh are to be interlinked, and we have a history of building dams and
barrages to store water. Parliament has already passed a Waterways Act, which
will make navigation channels of 111 rivers, by straightening, dredging, and
creating barrages.
While these projects require
serious ecological consideration, they are usually informed only by the need to
‘use’ water. For instance, river dredging may increase the capacity of a river
channel, but can also interfere with underground reservoirs. Over-dredging can
destroy these reservoirs. River interlinking changes hydrology and can benefit
certain areas from a purely anthropocentric perspective, but does nothing to
augment water supply to other non-target districts. Constructions of barrages
have impacts on ecosystems and economies: the commercially important hilsa fish
are no longer found in the Padma river after the construction of the Farraka
barrage across the Ganges.
In the case of wetlands like
ponds, lakes and lagoons, the contestations are more fierce. Who owns the
wetland is a common quandary — and what happens to the wetland also depends on
this. Asia’s largest freshwater oxbow lake, the Kanwar lake in Bihar, has shrunk
to one-third of its size due to encroachment, much like Jammu and Kashmir’s Dal
lake. Water sources like streams, which go into lakes, also get cut off, as is
the case of lakes in Bengaluru and streams in the Delhi Ridge. The political
pressure to usurp water and wetlands as land is high — and for this reason,
States have failed to secure perimeters and catchment areas or notify wetlands.
Why then do the Draft Wetland
Rules award full authority to the States? The particularly complex case of
wetlands warrants more checks and balances. In the proposed scenario, with an
absence of scientific criteria for identifying wetlands, it is imperative to
have a second independent functioning authority.
What comprises a wetland is an
important question that the Draft Rules leave unanswered. Historically, as
wetlands did not earn revenue, they were marked as ‘wastelands’. While the
Wetland Atlas of India says the country has 1,88,470 inland wetlands, the
actual number may be much more: U.P. itself has more than one lakh wetlands,
mostly unidentified by the government.
Significantly, the 2010 rules
outline criteria for wetland identification including genetic diversity,
outstanding natural beauty, wildlife habitats, corals, coral reefs, mangroves,
heritage areas, and so on. These criteria would refer to wetlands like Pulicat
in Andhra Pradesh which have nearly 200 varieties of fish.
The Ramsar Convention rules are
the loftiest form of wetland identification that the world follows. Ramsar has
specific criteria for choosing a wetland as a Ramsar site, which distinguishes
it as possessing ‘international importance’. An important distinguishing marker
is that Ramsar wetlands should support significant populations of birds, fish,
or other non-avian animals. This means that it is ecological functioning which
distinguishes a wetland from, say, a tank, which is just a source of water.
However, man-made tanks or sources of water can also evolve into wetlands. For
instance, Kaliveli tank in Tamil Nadu, an important bird area, is fed by a
system of tanks and man-made channels forming a large and vibrant landscape. A
wetland is more than a source of water, or a means for water storage, though it
is often reduced to only that. By removing ecological and other criteria for
wetland identification and protection, and the examples of activities that
could hamper this physical functioning, the new draft underlines the same
malaise which misses the wetlands for the water.
Use and non-use
While the new draft calls for
sustainability, this is a difficult concept to enforce, particularly with
regard to water. Regulation of activities on a wetland and their “thresholds”
are to be left entirely to local or State functionaries. There are insufficient
safeguards for the same, with the lack of any law-based scientific criteria or
guidance. For instance, it is telling that regulation of activities in the
draft rules do not make any obvious connection with existing groundwater
legislations because these two aspects are still seen as separate.
The 2016 Draft Wetland Rules also
call for wise use of wetlands. ‘Wise use’ is a concept used by the Ramsar
Convention, and is open to interpretation. It could mean optimum use of
resources for human purpose. It could mean not using a wetland so that we
eventually strengthen future water security. It could also mean just leaving
the wetland and its catchment area as is for flood control, carbon
sequestration, and water recharge functions.
Finally, in a country which is
both water-starved as well as seasonally water-rich, it is not just politics
and use that should dictate how wetlands are treated. Sustainability cannot be
reached without ecology. Towards this end, our wetland rules need to reinforce
wetlands as more than open sources of water, and we need to revise how wetlands
should be identified and conserved.
Neha Sinha is with the Bombay
Natural History Society. Views expressed are personal.
Reconsider
the Rules: on 2017 Wetland Rules
Earlier this year, a judgment by
the Uttarakhand High Court, stating that Ganga and Yamuna rivers are “living
entities”, captured the national imagination. It is worth noting that wetlands,
the other major water-based ecosystem apart from rivers, are at a moment of
policy transition in the country. This year, a new legal framework for wetlands
was passed, the Wetland
(Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017, replacing the earlier Rules of
2010. Also this year, the Supreme Court passed an order directing States to
identify wetlands in the country within a stipulated timeframe.
Going forward
The 2017 Wetland Rules have been
criticised for doing away with strong wetland monitoring systems and omitting
important wetland types. At the same time, the Supreme Court order directs
States to come forward and notify wetlands. What
then could be the way forward?
The 2010 and 2017 Rules for
wetlands both emphasise that the ecological character of wetlands ought to be
maintained for their conservation. ‘Ecological character’ refers to processes
and components which make the wetland a particular, and sometimes unique,
ecosystem. For example, as lagoons like Chilika (Odisha) and Pulicat (Tamil
Nadu/Andhra Pradesh) are characterised by a mix of saline and fresh water, the
flows of each type need to be maintained; river flood plains contain wetlands
that require conservation so they can re-fuel the river with fish and other
aquatic life during flooding.
In the 2010 Rules, some related
criteria were made explicit, such as natural beauty, ecological sensitivity,
genetic diversity, historical value, etc. These have been omitted in the 2017
Rules. There are a few reasons why this is problematic. First, there is
multiple interest around wetlands. Multiple interests also have governance
needs, and this makes it absolutely necessary to identify and map these
multiple uses. Leading on from this, and second, it is crucial to identify
ecological criteria so that the wetlands’ character can be maintained. The key
to wetland conservation is not just understanding regimes of multiple use — but
conserving or managing the integrity of the wetland ecosystem. Finally,
restriction of activities on wetlands will be done as per the principle of
‘wise use’, determined by the State wetland authority. Whether wise use will
include maintaining ecological character remains to be seen. Under the new
Rules, no authority to issue directions, which are binding in nature to desist
from any activity detrimental to wetland conservation, has been prescribed to State
wetland authorities.
Salt pans are an example how one
use (of making salt) has trumped the other (of environmental balance). Salt
pans as ‘wetlands’ have been omitted from the new Rules. They were identified
as wetlands in the 2010 Rules, as they are often important sites of migratory
birds and other forms of biodiversity. The omission in the 2017 Rules suggests
that while saltpans do exist as wetlands, they do not require any conservation
or ecological balance. The inference can also be that it would be acceptable to
tip the environmental balance or integrity of such a wetland, which could lead
to damage and pollution.
The case of Deepor Beel
The issue of wetlands being
multiple-use areas — and subsequently being abused due to clashes of interest —
found centre-stage this year with the observations
of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in the case of Deepor Beel.
Deepor Beel is a Ramsar site and
a part of it is also wildlife sanctuary in Guwahati, Assam. (‘Ramsar Sites are
designated because they meet the criteria for identifying wetlands of
international importance.’) This wetland harbours a wide variety of biodiversity,
and also suffers from intense man-made pressure — the city’s municipal waste is
dumped close to the Beel. Large, meat-eating storks (Greater adjutant storks)
are ironically found eating from the mountains of garbage at the site.
Potential impacts of contamination or poisoning from the garbage are still
unknown. This January, 26 storks died. The fact that Deepor Beel (Beel means
water body) exists as a wetland does not prevent garbage dumping; this is a
fate faced by many wetlands. The NGT’s observations on Deepor Beel are
interesting and symptomatic of what is happening in several wetlands. In an
inspection done by the judicial member of the Tribunal, it was noted that waste
was being dumped “not beyond the site but within it,” and “demarcations are
made by drying out areas or cutting off water sources”. These are classic ways
of killing a wetland and turning it from a wet to a dry ecosystem; or from a
lake to a garbage dump or cesspool. The Tribunal has now asked for the
“traditional” spread of the wetland.
Given all the modern uses of
wetlands, or the use of the wetland only for its land, looking at traditional
cartography may be one way to understand catchments of wetlands. It may also be
a way of restoring some modicum of ecological character, identity or ‘rights’
to wetlands, as the river judgment suggested. There are challenges ahead in
identifying wetlands – multiple and competing use is just one of them.
Understanding the historic spread and ecological character will be an important
bulwark for the way forward. Setting clear governance systems would be the
next. Without either, we are looking at a complete dilution of wetlands in the
country.
Neha Sinha is a wildlife
conservationist
Citizens
for waterfowl: on the urgent need to save wetlands across India
Every winter, the thousands of
wetlands that dot India transform from muddy slips of water to raucous bird
parties. Ducks and geese from Ladakh and Tibet swim through aquatic vegetation,
waders on stilt-like legs forage for grubs on squelchy, half-submerged banks,
and sinuous Oriental darters spear the water for fish.
The two-week Asian Waterbird Census
(AWC) that surveys sites across 25 countries in Asia and Australasia, including
India, began last month.
While the data is still pouring
in from this huge citizen science initiative, the census over the years has
pointed to some clear trends. India has the biggest species diversity among the
regions sampled by AWC. The survey tallied a mean figure of 1.8 million
waterbirds over 300 sites in the country between 2008 and 2015.
Odisha’s lagoon, Chilika Lake,
they found, supports a staggering half-a-million waterbirds. Many of the
waterbirds that winter in India’s wetlands are of course migratory: like the
bar-headed goose, which breeds in Mongolia, Tibet and Kyrgyzstan and crosses
the Himalayas and Hindu Kush to reach India.
Decline in species
But the picture isn’t all rosy.
There has been a notable decline in several species: the Oriental darter,
better known as the snakebird for its long neck, which was once a common sight
in many wetlands, numbered just 4,000 in the sites surveyed. The Indian
skimmer, with a bright orange bill — the lower mandible longer than the upper
one so it can ‘skim’ over water to snap up fish — were just 300. As for the
sarus crane, the world’s tallest flying bird, often found in pairs or small
groups near wetlands, only 100 birds were found in several years.
But wetlands, cherished equally
by local residents, birdwatchers — and real estate developers — are in peril.
The National Wetland Atlas, prepared by the Indian Space Research Organisation
in 2011, found that India has over 2,00,000 wetlands. But a vast majority had
not been notified as wetlands thus running the risk of being destroyed.
The many cases being heard right
now in courts across the country reflect the wetland’s precarious existence.
In Delhi-NCR, birdwatchers have
filed a case to protect the Basai wetland, which is fed by sewage but continues
to harbour almost 300 bird species. A similar case was recently filed to
conserve Najafgarh jheel, a riverine wetland in Haryana. Kolkata’s iconic East
Kolkata Wetlands, designated a Ramsar wetland of international importance, is
being steadily eaten up by construction, and a case has been filed with the
National Green Tribunal. This wetland, like many in and around cities, plays an
important civic role: it acts like a giant sieve for the city’s sewage, thanks
to the fish and aquatic vegetation.
What’s not a wetland
Committees are also examining the
condition of Sukhna Lake in Chandigarh, Deepor Beel in Guwahati, and the lakes
in Nainital, all choked by sewage, garbage and encroachment. To make matters
worse, the new legislation for wetlands, the Wetland (Conservation and
Management) Rules 2017, unlike the Wetland Rules of 2010, implies
that manmade waterbodies (such as tanks) and salt pans are not wetlands. In
reality though, salt pans and tanks not only support birds both in coastal and
peri-urban areas, they are also an essential part of the local cultural fabric.
“A simple assessment of (bird)
count information indicates that several waterbird populations in the Central
Asian flyway (comprising migratory routes) are declining. Urgent national and
regional action is needed to reverse this trend,” says Taej Mundkur, Regional
Coordinator of the AWC with Wetlands International.
While hundreds of wetlands in
India are in need of identification and notification, at the Conference of the
Parties to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild
Animals last year, the Central government offered to consult with other
countries to operationalise the Central Asian Flyway Action Plan to Conserve
Migratory Waterbirds and their Habitats.
The action plan hopes to reduce
threats to waterfowl and conserve wetlands while also tackling threats such as
power lines and windmills. This plan is now being created with civil society
and other experts. “It should be recognised that better management of our
productive wetlands for waterbirds also provides a wide range of benefits to
people. So it is a win-win situation,” says Mundkur.
Yet, one thing is clear. While
wetlands are clearly in legislative, administrative and physical peril, the
citizens of India are standing up for them. The AWC, a simultaneous and
widespread count over two continents, would not be possible without the active
involvement of citizens. This effort — coming from nature lovers, forest
departments, and networks like the Indian Bird Conservation Network — harnesses
the spirit of volunteerism. And the observations of these intrepid citizen
scientists, who count birds year after year, sometimes in places that are
dismissed as nothing more than a sewage line, give hope to the world’s
waterfowl that today must cross both geographical and metaphorical mountains.
Neha Sinha is a wildlife
conservationist with Bombay Natural History Society.
(All of the above articles have
been taken straight from The Hindu. We owe it all to them. This is just an
effort to consolidate opinions expressed in The Hindu in a subject-wise
manner.)
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