After reading this article you will learn about:- 1. Introduction to Wetland Management 2. Basic Strategy for Wetland Management 3. Task of Planning 4. Management Action Plan 5. National Wetland Policy 6. Legislation Relating to Wetland.
Wetland Management in India
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Essay Contents:
- Essay on the Introduction to Wetland Management
- Essay on the Basic Strategy for Wetland Management
- Essay on the Task of Planning for Wetland Management
- Essay on the Management Action Plan for Wetland Management
- Essay on the National Wetland Policy
- Essay on the Legislation Relating to Wetland
Essay # 1. Introduction to Wetland Management:
Natural bodies of water are not absolutely pure. Various organic compounds and inorganic elements remain in dissolved form. Silt and clay remain suspended in the water for a considerable period. Many kinds of microscopic and a good number of macroscopic flora and fauna grow in different types of aquatic habitats.
The physical and chemical quality of the waters vary according to nature of the basin shape and size, depth, light penetration, precipitation, location, temperature, chemical nature of the surrounding soil, dissolved minerals, and pH.
Finally, on these the biological components of the habitat depend. If all the physical, chemical and biological parameters are in optimum condition and a balance between these is maintained, we may assume an ideal or ‘normal’ condition.
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If, for some reason, this balance is disturbed and anyone or several of these components are in excess, then we can say that the excess materials have polluted the environment. Under natural conditions if this happens, gradually the homeostatic condition will be naturally restored.
But, if it is due to deliberate human activity, natural recovery will be difficult and ecological disasters may occur. In countries like India and Bangladesh, pollution problems mostly originate from ‘abuse, misuse or cocktail’ use of pesticides, and overdose and, untimely, application of fertilizers and from domestic wastes.
Major pollution sources of the aquatic environments are:
(a) Domestic wastes, sewage and garbage’s;
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(b) Agricultural wastes, pesticides, insecticides and fertilizers;
(c) Industrial effluents from different heavy industries, mills, factories, cottage industries containing various pollutants; and
(d) Biological origin, growth of excessive microbial organisms causing health hazards, oxygen depletion, etc.
Most of the industries and factories are situated on the banks of the rivers or very close to a river system and the effluents and wastes are mostly thrown directly into the river water without any treatment to make the effluent ‘safe’ from the biological standpoint. As a result, the depletion of the biotic components near the sources is observed.
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A preliminary survey near the tanneries in Dhaka on the river. Buriganga will reveal this fact. As the rivers are connected with each other and different mills and factories are situated on their banks, the recovery time of the water from the effects of the effluent is very low, and, during the non- monsoon period, conditions become worse.
Besides chemical pollutants, pollution by the excessive growth of microbial organisms is posing a serious threat to the health conditions of humans and fishes and birds. One aspect of limnology is the study of water quality. Clean water is free from any excess organic, inorganic or microbial contamination.
With regard to the latter component, bacteria, blue green and other algae play their important role, not only as decomposers and primary producers, but at times they create eutrophication, anoxic condition, fish death and even human illness, and are largely responsible for deterioration of the water quality for drinking, bathing and other domestic uses.
Raw sewage contamination in water systems is the single major factor for the recurrence of various diseases. Having innumerable water systems India and Bangladesh is perennially plagued with as many as 32 waterborne diseases including cholera, dysentery, diarrhea, typhoid, shigellosis etc. The diseases of fish, waterfowl, cattle and other animals are also known but not much studied.
With respect to human diseases e.g., cholera, shigellosis, E. coli diarrhea and rotavirus diarrhea, dysentery etc. the relationship between hydrophytes and the pathogenic bacteria under eutrophication has been discussed by Islam and Islam (1993).
It has been reported that several bacteria remain attached with some hydrophytes (Table 8.8) and these pathogens could spread by some free-floating hydrophytes and .phytoplankton. Inter-village transmission of cholera pathogen takes place by the connecting waterways.
Not only the diarrheal disease but diseases affecting skin and eyes are caused by different algae. Thus the role of hydrophytes and phytoplankton in the spread and cause of diseases in Bangladesh and India is an important aspect of limnology and should be studied with due emphasis.
No systematic study have been made on this aspect of limnology which includes sanitary engineering, and other aspects associated with the disposal of sewage and domestic wastes. The fruits of Trapa bispinosa (Paniphal), Euryale ferox (Makhna) and lotus and the petiole of water lily (Shapla) are eaten raw directly from the contaminated water by the people and they become the victims of diarrheal diseases.
Many blue-green algae blooms or the blooms caused by Euglena, Trachelomonas or Dinoflagellates or diatoms may cause not only oxygen-depletion of the water and thereby creating problems for fish growth but several of these secrete toxigenic substances in the water which are responsible for various ailments in the human body such as skin irritation, eye trouble, or if they enter into the body, may affect the nervous system.
Pollutants from the industrial and agricultural sources (point sources) may be checked by adopting suitable treatments or diversion, but those of non-point source (i.e., entry to the beels through land runoff or atmospheric fallout) are difficult to control through conventional methods of treatment. These substances are highly persistent and thereby contaminate the entire biogeochemical cycle of the beels and tanks.
Biological factors also contribute to the ultimate effect of these pollutants, which may remain in low concentrations. However, through bioaccumulation and bio magnification by fish and other aquatic organisms their toxins ultimately enter the human body through the food chain with serious harmful effects. Metals and pesticides have the greatest potential for bio magnification in the aquatic food chain.
The toxicity of the pesticides has been tested on fish, prawn and fish-food organisms. It was found that the latter, i.e., plankton and benthos, are very sensitive to these chemicals as compared to fish, thus adversely affecting the latter also. Metals vary in toxicity, which depend on environmental conditions and their specification.
In combination, metals show higher toxicity than individual metals. Zn, Cu and Cr in combination have shown several times more toxicity to Oreochromis mossambicus than the individual metals
The wetland ecosystems have two complementary phases—aquatic and terrestrial (during dry season). During the latter phase it may be used for agriculture or for grazing and both benefit the fishery by enriching the aquatic phase during flood. The former may, however, lead to cultural eutrophication.
Freshwaters are perhaps the most vulnerable of habitats through their use by humans as:
(a) Sinks for many products of human activity in their catchment;
(b) Natural drains for the removal of waste to the sea; and
(c) A valuable and essential resource for various purposes.
Aquatic ecosystems have been changed by man for various reasons.
For example:
(a) To control water-borne diseases;
(b) To establish farmland (but without the knowledge of the consequence of pollution and eutrophication); or
(c) To prevent flood damage to property built on natural floodplains through stupidity or greed i.e., against the law of nature and by violating ecological principles.
Conservation of natural ecosystems can be defined in various ways.
For example:
(a) It is a process of maintaining, through whatever means necessary or available, the maximum diversity of organisms and ecosystems;
(b) It is the total management of the rural areas for the fair and equal benefit of all groups which have a direct interest in their use;
(c) It amounts to making the best of what is left after waterways and their catchments have been used for the obvious needs of the society; and
(d) Legislation is essential for reservation of particularly interesting areas.
In spite of these, more wetlands/waterways are being degraded and lost than created and restored.
The agents of change are varied but two are of widespread significance:
(a) Drainage involving river dredging, building of flood banks and clearance of macrophytes; and
(b) Eutrophication causing threats of toxic pollution, overfishing, introduction of exotic species and recreation pressure.
The uses of water and associated biological problems have strong utilitarian and economic undercurrents. The conservation of natural aquatic communities, in contrast, seem something of a luxury. This is partly true to some extent, but the costs of seriously disrupting natural freshwaters may outweigh the benefits of doing so.
For conservation of wetland resources the following approach/system may be considered:
(a) An ecosystem approach is needed to ensure that the water use, land use pattern, pollution and modification of the river system do not impair the trophic structure and functions of the ecosystems.
In beels and haors ecosystems, which have a limited water spread area, large scale abstraction of water for irrigation leads to drastic variations in the water quality.
The wetland waters are used for irrigation, industry, thermal power generation, potable supplies and fish production under natural system.
Of these uses, fish production will be given priority over other under the ecosystem approach and this should be followed by:
(i) Urban and industrial waste management practices,
(ii) Judicious use of fertilizers in agriculture, and
(iii) Afforestation and social forestry programmes.
In addition, there is also a need for catchment modification for the control of soil incursion, transport of fertilizers and pesticides into the beels, haors, etc. through agricultural runoff. The best management practices (BMP) are needed to control and treat pollutants, and adopt suitable horticultural practices for making grassed waterways, retention ponds and terraces for checking soil erosion.
These can reduce pollutant losses in runoff and these practices provide the best cost-effective and acceptable technology for the control of soil erosion and nonpoint source phosphorus losses.
Natural ecosystems are in a continuous process of change and adjustment through natural selection on the organisms comprising them and a system of maximum homeostasis is maintained under natural physical and chemical environment.
There is nothing to ‘improve‘ such an undisturbed ecosystem and under this condition fish growth is moderate or aquatic macrophyte beds are extensive. But attempts to increase the fish growth or clear the weed beds will always result in a chain of repercussions which is very expensive to counteract.
(b) Geomorphological systems should be taken into consideration. The river floodplain is essential for the efficient and natural disposal of occasional high discharges. But attempts to change its use from this purpose to farming (or otherwise) have necessitated the raising of the height of the river banks.
In cost-benefit analysis, so far as the general public is concerned, the balance might be very un-favourable. For conservation measures each ecosystem or habitat with its geomorphological, physical and chemical background must be known by a limnologist to diagnose the problems and suggest solutions.
(c) It is relatively difficult to have these solutions implemented, because implementation is by and large a political and social matter. Those who are responsible for and are involved in taking decisions may be either unable or unwilling to grasp the technical issues and the long-term economic implications.
This conservation and restoration of the freshwater wetlands in India and Bangladesh, as elsewhere, cannot be achieved without a study of politics and sociology and it should not be outside the scope of the scientist concerned with the fresh-water environment.
A major part of the wetlands in the eastern region of the country—particularly in the state of West Bengal—is waterlogged. In order to derive additional wealth from these unutilized and under-utilised wetlands it will be necessary to develop a separate kind of specialisation and planning as distinct from that of tree plantation schemes which have succeeded in the wastelands of arid regions.
Unenviably, wetlands, in most cases, are standing examples of environmental mismanagement and bear testimony of our ignorance about the environment that sustains us and the insults we have inflicted upon it. Therefore, any positive action towards wetland development will be a tangible step towards restoring the ecological balance rendered unstable by man’s action on nature.
In India, significance of wetland development activities has gained a steep ascendancy since last few years. This can largely be attributed to a new generation of political pragmatism that is far more sensitive to the growing challenge of environmental issues than it was ever before.
We, therefore, have one of the biggest wasteland development programmes in the world with twin objectives of poverty alleviation and environmental repair.
The country’s one hundred million hectares of under-productive marginal lands are devoted towards uplifting the condition of living of about two hundred million marginal population struggling under the poverty line to raise the prosperity of the rest of the countrymen.
For these poorer millions, wetlands are the terminal resources to fall back upon. This is also the reason for which the programme deserves the most careful and systematic planning attention.
An important feature of India’s wetland development programme is that it combines the task of securing out a strategy for wetland development alternatives with the task of lending similar support to implement the projects. Such a unified programme ensures reduction of gap between expected benefit and actual outcome—a gap that has been a matter of serious consent in many of the lofty endeavors all over the world.
Essay # 2. Basic Strategy for Wetland Management:
To ensure a sustainable development of available wetlands it will be imperative to adhere to the strategy outline by the Executive Director, UNEP, in this regard. In brief, the strategy pays emphasis on three key issues, viz., coordination, training and awareness campaigns.
Coordination is necessary to pursue a cross-sectoral approach so that various implementing agencies and specialists—belonging to agriculture, forestry, agronomy, environment, hydrology, fisheries, ecology, geography, economics, and other relevant fields- can sit together and contribute to develop appropriate alternatives.
Similarly, training facilities will aim at creating indigenous ability to carry out sustainable development work. And, finally, raising the level of awareness of environmental issues amongst the people is considered as a matter of vital importance in the whole range of activities in resources conservation.
The task of specialised coordination assumes a particular significance and is an intrinsic requirement in wetland management, the major components of coordination being:
1. Advanced scientific and technical information.
2. People’s perception.
3. Development agencies active on wetlands.
It is important to remember that even if a project is economically viable and technically sound it has to be ecologically balanced and socially acceptable for the plan to succeed. A number of basin management plans did not work because people could not accept or conform to the anticipated land use.
There have also been numerous failures from the point of view of maintenance of ecological balance. Advanced scientific and technological information are important for avoiding ecological imbalance and possible disaster, and also for implementing advanced technology in various wetland resource systems.
Any change envisaged will have to be linked with the preference of the people and their participation will have to be ensured beforehand. Simultaneously, appropriate coordination with existing development agencies will have to be established. This will ensure the most appropriate and acceptable course of action for implementing desired modifications.
The following are some of the agencies active on wetlands:
(1) Dept. of Agriculture;
(2) Dept. of Irrigation & Flood Control;
(3) Dept. of Fisheries;
(4) Dept. of Environment
(5) River Sanitation (Ganga Actions);
(6) Dept. of Urban Development;
(7) Dept. of Rural Development;
(8) Dept. of Land & Land Reforms;
(9) Institutional Finance;
(10) Wasteland Development;
(11) Meteorological Observatories;
(12) Zoological Survey of India;
(13) Botanical Survey of India;
(14) Geological Survey of India;
(15) Research Institutes and University Programmes, and
(16) Nongovernmental Organisations (NGOs).
Essay # 3. Task of Planning for Wetland Management:
Social and economic perceptions help to perfect the choice of technology options and design. Educated people’s self-styled efforts in planning for rural development technologies meet with a success no more than what is due to these naive efforts.
The scenario becomes so dismal that it falls contingent to introduce the concept of “Appropriate Technology” to distinguish the useless ones and also to give a direction to what is needed in the field of technology design and development. Today a major criterion of appropriate technology is to ensure sustainable change.
Use of these advanced perception of planning need and planning process is particularly important while dealing with the problems of marginal area development. Yet, it will be proper to remember that fundamental understanding of the process and appropriate methods to bring change remain far from being achieved.
To assists the task of planning for natural resource systems a set of ground rules has been developed.
These are:
1. Wetlands, in most cases, will have conflicting land use interests and any change contemplated cannot be universally good to all the contending interests. Therefore, designer will have to take side.
2. In land use studies no observation is independent of observer-object relationship and observer for that matter becomes a part of the object. This is why the participatory action research is the strongest methodological tool for understanding the use of land and design of wiser use.
3. The culture of conserving resources and using it as many ways as possible, has been found to thrive among the poor. There is prima facie an inverse relationship between affluence and affinity with recycling or reuse.
4. Information about natural resource systems, particularly about those of developing countries, are meagre. Taking decisions on wise use, therefore, will use cybernetic models in place of any exercise in pretentious optimisation.
5. All public decisions are political decisions.
6. Any misuse of natural biological systems will have its social, economic and environmental backlash. However, such reactions are not instant and this time lag provides opportunities to the manipulators and speculators to inflict permanent damages to our ecosystems by forcing wrong land use changes on the society.
7. Environmental damages are identified not by observing the quality of the environment or measuring the external stresses alone but also by evaluating the internal strength and metabolic resistance of the particular group of people inflicted by that external stress.
It is easily agreed that the above postulates and the protocol developed in figure are of preliminary nature. Subjective ability to handle the challenge of sustainable development is still amateurish. This majority will only come through the on-going experiments with change that many of us are involved in bringing in our respective areas of operation at various places of the world.
These experiments with change are either in the form of a movement to preserve a biosphere or to design wise use of an ecosystem for the same goal of sustainable development.
Major concerns in developing rural technology in general and wetlands in particular may be summarised as follows:
1. Beneficiaries externalities in the process of planning,
2. Social feasibility of the proposed changes are ignored,
3. Search for alternative technologies are not rooted on the strength and weakness of the existing technologies.
It is, therefore, considered imperative to re-orient the search for development options through benchmark studies of existing technology and use of land. The total chain of efforts has been described in Fig. 8.1. In addition state-wise list of wetlands of international importance is given in Table 8.9.
Essay # 4. Management Action Plan for Wetland Management:
For successful action plan for wetland conservation the following aspects of wetland should be addressed in appropriate manner:
i. Protection
ii. Catchment Area Development
iii. Siltation Control
iv. Pollution Control
v. Biodiversity Conservation
vi. Sustainable Resource Utilisation
vii. Fisheries Development
viii. Generating Awareness
ix. Peoples’ Participation
x. Monitoring and Evaluation
xi. Research
Then only an integrated action plan can be drafted with active involvement of the surrounding community.
Essay # 5. National Wetland Policy:
With rapid realisation of wetland values, the national policy was formulated.
The major goals of such policy are:
i. Commitment by the Government to sustain and restore wetlands
ii. Build wetland conservation within the broader framework of cross-sectoral national planning
ii. Maintain biological diversity and ecological character while ensuring benefits to the local community
iv. Stop conversion of wetlands for any other land use purposes including practices which change or tend to change the ecological processes, functions and attributes of wetlands
v. Rehabilitation of degraded wetlands and enhancement of their resource base
vi. Involvement of local communities, NGOs and concerned agencies for management of wetlands
vii. Application of EIA on all activities impacting the wetlands.
However, the existing Policies state the following:
i. Directive Principles of State Policy — Articles 48A & 51A (g) state;
‘…to protect and improve the natural environment including the rivers, lakes and wildlife…’
ii. National Conservation Strategy and Policy Statement on Environment and Development (1992) highlights Conservation of Wetlands, Coastal Areas, Rivers and Island Ecosystems
iii. National Forest Policy amended in 1948 and National Wildlife Action Plan (1983) emphasises long-term conservation of wildlife
On assessment over situation of wetland conservation in this country one can easily feel the following lacunae in the policy:
i. Lack of coordination and integration of policies
ii. Conflicts in land use planning/development
iii. Inter-sectoral or interdepartmental conflicts/claims including boundary disputes Thus, there is a great need for adoption of a “National Wetland Policy” in this country.
Essay # 6. Legislation Relating to Wetland:
Over 200 State and Central laws exist for regulating wetland resources of the world with respect to protection of— water, fish, birds and the land.
In addition there are International Laws and conventions for the said purpose.
In India alone there are a number of Laws having some relevance to wetland habitat regulation.
They are:
i. The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986
ii. The CRZ Notification, 1991
iii. The Environment Impact Assessment Notification, 1994
iv. The Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972
v. The Tamil Nadu Aquaculture (Regulation) Act
vi. The West Bengal Town and Country Planning Act
vii. The West Bengal Fishery Act.
But there is no specific legislation on wise use of wetlands.
Thus, following actions are needed at present (Fig. 8.2):
i. Comprehensive unified wetland conservation legislation based on cross-sectoral approach
ii. Include wetlands as a category under land use classification in its own right taking their structural and functional aspects into consideration
iii. Legislation relating to wetlands to include regulation of activities in the catchment area impacting water body
iv. Zone-based regulation of activities to ensure sustainable use of wetland resources.
Finally, the concept of wise use policy has to be reviewed on site specific criterion including people’s need (Fig. 8.3):
a. National Lake Conservation Plan (NLCP):
A National Lake Conservation Plant (NLCP) is being implemented for conservation of polluted and degraded urban/semi urban lakes, leading to take rejuvenation in terms of improvement in water quality and biodiversity. Under this programme over 46 lakes have been taken up covering the entire country.
b. National River Conservation Plan (NRCP):
Similarly National River Conservation Plant (NRCP) is also under implementation in 160 towns along polluted stretches of 34 rivers spread over 20 states, the major rivers being Ganga, Yamuna, Gomti, Damodar, Sutlej, Krishna, Cauvery and Godavari. The objective of NRCP is to check pollution in rivers through implementation of various pollution abatement schemes.