Thane: NGO writes to PM Modi to conserve wetlands in India, says 'no fresh efforts needed to construct them'

Stating that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan of building 75 lakes in each district as 75th year of Independence endeavour is grossly inadequate, green groups have requested him to at least quadruple the target to save all wetlands.

The National Decadal Change Atlas has recently identified 2,31,195 wetlands across the country and if they are divided by the country’s 765 districts, the figure turns out to 300, NatConnect Foundation said in its communique to the Prime Minister.

“The water bodies are already existing and we do not have to make fresh efforts to construct them,” NatConnect Foundation director B N Kumar said and appealed to the PM that “Let us just preserve and conserve them. Thus, the PM could easily raise the bar four-fold and reset the target.

The Wetland Atlas, prepared by ISRO’s National Space Application centre, was uploaded to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Control in February. The Supreme Court has already ruled that all the two lakh plus wetlands ought to be protected.

Nilesh Desai, Director of Space Application centre, said “Wetlands constitute a vital ecosystem among all the terrestrial ecosystems occurring on the land. Moreover, India is blessed with an enormous diversity of wetland ecosystems, which play a critical role in regulating hydrological processes, carbon fixation, flood control, nutrient cycling, water quality etc.”

Kumar said the government could divide all the 2.3 lakh wetlands into parcels of 75 each, to retain the idea of Aazadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav as desired by the Prime Minister, and task the officials and the people to preserve and conserve them.

This is important in view of the disappearing wetlands under the guise of urban development and infrastructure development , he said.

The PM could perhaps use this as the next Mann Ki Baat idea for May 29, ahead of the Environment Day to be observed on June 5, NatConnect said and launched a social media campaign - #saveourwetlands - to increase awareness about the need to conserve the wetlands. NatConnect which is running a national campaign on environmental issues has secured about 15,000 online supporters.

“Wetlands, as many are aware, hold excess water and act as flood control mechanism,” said Nandakumar Pawar, head Shri Ekvira Aai Pratishtan. They help in charging our ever-depleting ground water level. Representing our bio-diversity, the wetlands also serve as a source of survival for the fishing community, Pawar said supporting the NatConnect campaign. Ultimately, wetlands contribute to our food security, he said.

The government could involve the local community volunteers to oversee the protection of these wetlands.

“If each one of us protects the biodiversity, no one will be able to attack it,” Pawar said.

“The concern for conservation and management of wetlands is increasing all over the world including India, due to burgeoning population pressure and developmental activities. In order to manage wetlands effectively, information of its spatio-temporal variations is a pre-requisite, which can be generated over a period of time using images acquired by orbiting satellites,” Desai said.

This drive to protect all the wetlands across the country will set a new trend for the rest of the world and give a major push to the Ramsar Convention’s resolution, Kumar said.

The Convention on Wetlands is the intergovernmental treaty that provides the framework for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources. The Convention was adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar in 1971 and came into force in 1975. Since then, almost 90% of UN member states, from all the world’s geographic regions, have acceded to become “Contracting Parties”, according to Ramsar.org website.