Wetlands Are Crucial For Groundwater Recharge And Control Floods, It Is Time We Take Conservation Seriously
India is now home to 64 Ramsar sites, after the Union environment ministry gave them the tag, making them wetlands of international importance.?With this, India¡¯s total wetland area has increased to 1.2 million hectares.
Wetlands in India
At least 11 more wetlands in India are likely to get the status of Ramsar sites this year itself as the Union environment ministry has set a target of having 75 designated wetlands in the country on the 75th anniversary of Independence.
This is great news for the efforts to conserve India's wetlands, which are facing increasing threats due to encroachment, development projects, pollution, etc.
What causes destruction of wetlands?
The biggest driver of wetland loss and degradation is the land use change to non-wetland use. In urban areas, wetlands are lost to increasing urban sprawl, whereas in rural areas, wetlands have been converted to agriculture and aquaculture.?
As inland wetlands have become more ephemeral, land use change has become rampant. Besides, wetlands remain exposed to threats of pollution, species invasion, unsustainable harvest of resources, ill-managed tourism, and a range of other threats.
Climate change is impacting the wetlands at a rapid rate. High altitude glacial wetlands are melting rapidly causing flash floods in the highlands, riverine wetlands are running dry due to the rise in temperature, drying up and draining of peatlands, rising sea levels are causing salinization of coastal wetlands, coral bleaching and changing hydrology are accelerating fast.
Why are wetlands important?
Wetlands, including swamps, marshes, lakes, floodplains, and other water bodies that are filled with static or flowing water play a crucial role in maintaining the ecological balance, by acting as a home to birds, animals, fish, and other aquatic species and plants.
They also act as a natural carbon sink and also play a key role in absorbing rainwater, thus controlling floods.
"Wetlands are areas where water remains, and it forms an ecosystem. Wetlands are connectors of the land and sea. When water comes into the wetlands, it slows down and this process in itself serves several purposes including groundwater recharge, flood buffering, capturing nutrients, treating pollutants, providing habitat for fish and other aquatic spices and also becomes a water source," Dr. Ritesh Kumar is the Director of Wetlands International South Asia told Indiatimes.
Natural wetlands lost, artificial wetlands added
According to official data, around 4.8% of India's land comes under wetland, but the ecosystem has been facing increasing threats.
The national wetland index maintained by Wetlands International South Asia, which is built from time-series data from 500 individual wetlands indicates that during 1980-2015, one-fifth of natural wetlands have been lost.
As per the data, the natural coastal wetlands are declining (from 3.69 million hectares to 3.62 million hectares in ten years). An increase in the area has been reported for mangroves (by 18,662 ha), creeks (26,929 ha), and coral reefs (2,784 ha); however, the inter-tidal mudflats have receded by 116,897 ha, and so have salt marshes (by 5,647 ha).
"When we talk about the destruction of wetlands, it should be noted that while natural wetlands are being destroyed, we are also creating new ones in the form of reservoirs, etc. So in terms of absolute data, while we have lost around 30% of natural wetlands, we have also created around 36% artificial wetlands," he said.
Even among the natural wetlands, coastal wetlands have been particularly affected with many being converted into mangrove forests and aquaculture plantations.
"We lost most of our natural wetlands to encroachments, both in urban and rural areas. Wetlands are hydrological systems. So if you change the inflow and outflow of the wetlands, it starts deteriorating. Any destruction to the natural course can have a devastating impact on the ecology including plant and animal lives," he said.
Who wetlands prevent floods?
The blocking of inlets and outlets of natural wetlands can also make flooding worse, especially in urban areas. Several recent studies have shown that the destruction of wetlands had a direct role in the unusually devastative floods across India.
"Whenever there are excess rains the water will accumulate in wetlands and if you construct on wetlands, it will result in flooding. We have seen this in Kerala, where a large number of wetlands were converted for other purposes. The same happened in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai in recent years. With climate change, extreme weather events are only increasing and so are flooding," Kumar said.
Need for wetland conservation
To make sure that natural disasters like the 2015 Chennai floods and 2018 Kerala floods do not repeat, Kumar said that it is important that we start conserving our natural wetlands.
"Conservation is all about restoring their natural self, by understating how the wetlands function, where the water comes from, what are the species inhabiting there, etc. Based on this we make a management plan and help respective local agencies to implement it. The ultimate objective is to maintain the ecological character of the wetland," he said.
He also said that mangroves are not a one-stop solution for restoring lost coastal wetlands.
"We do not recommend converting one wetland into another type. Instead of planting, we should restore the ecological conditions and if these are favorable for mangroves they will come back on their own. Planting should be done only if there is evidence that mangroves once existed there, else it might produce a negative effect on the overall ecology," he said.
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