GLOBAL VIEW
A. Nair is a business journalist based in Mumbai, India
India
Kidney failure B
If wetlands are the kidneys of cities, then most in India have entered a phase of chronic failure
etween January 2012 and January 2018, there were 652 cases of wetland destruc- tion across the state of Maharashtra, mostly for infrastructure, developmental
or residential purposes, according to a report by environmental NGO Vanashakti to mark World Wetland Day, on 2 February 2018. The data reveal that wetlands between two
Once called the city of lakes, Bangalore does not have a single lake with water fit for human consumption
to 800ha have been destroyed or degraded by dumping or development of bunds that starves the area of tidal water. ‘Despite the scientific knowledge and data on the importance of wet- lands, India – especially Maharashtra – continues to destroy them,’ says Stalin Dayanand, director, Vanashakti. ‘Sadly, even the courts have failed to under- stand the complexities of wetlands and have permitted destruction by asking for mangroves to be planted in return for loss of wetlands. This has had a counterproductive result, with bird habitats vanishing and making mangroves a tradeable commodity.’
The National Green Tribunal is currently hear- ing a petition regarding pollution of Mumbai’s coastal wetlands, creeks and beaches due to improper waste management, filed by Vanashakti. According to estimates by the NGO, there are around 10,000t of waste in the mangrove areas around Thane creek and the Mumbai Metropoli- tan Region. Moreover, the petition filed by Vanashakti
notes that municipal waste, which needs to be segregated to reach the assigned place for composting or landfill, is pushed down the creeks through the sewage lines, transforming vegeta- tion and mangroves into dumps. Similar scenes are enacted across South and North India, with multiple studies highlighting the country’s envi- ronmental crisis. Examples are proliferating. • The Charkop lake in suburban Mumbai has more plastic bags floating around than birds.
• Failure of the authorities to check industrial pollution in Nalagarh area of North India, in the pristine hills of Shimla, is wreaking havoc on residents, leading to a big increase in the num- ber of cases of renal diseases and gallstones.
• With a population of 10m, Bangalore imports virtually every drop of water it consumes from distant districts and from Arkavati, an important mountain river in Karnataka, as well as the Cauvery river. In February 2018, the BBC reported that
Bangalore was on a list of 11 major cities likely
to run out of drinking water (
bbc.com/news/ world-42982959), noting that ‘an in-depth inven- tory of the city’s lakes found that 85% had water that could only be used for irrigation and indus- trial cooling’. Once called the city of lakes, Bangalore does
not have a single lake with water fit for human consumption. In India 63.4m people are living without access to clean water, according to Wild Water, State of the World’s Water 2017, a new re- port by WaterAid. That is more than the combined population of Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhant. Compared globally, that is as many people as live in Australia, Sweden, Sri Lanka and Bulgaria – combined. Yamuna river, which runs through Delhi, has 16m faecal coliform bacteria; the standard is 500ppm for potable water. Research studies have also shown that in-
creasing concentration of heavy metals in some water bodies is leading to bioaccumulation in plants and animals that may later end up as food. In Bangalore, soil scientists have found higher levels of cadmium in green vegetables grown us- ing water from the Bellandur lake. The extraordinary sight of a lake on fire – due
to sewage, chemical effluents, industrial waste and construction debris – in Bangalore in January 2018 suggests that urban environments are col- lapsing under the weight of official indifference. The government has issued rules for conservation and management, and chosen 115 water bodies in 24 states for protection and support, but critics say this does not go nearly far enough. India requires at least $154bn to clean all its
major rivers, according to road transport, ship- ping and water resources minister Nitin Gadkari. He said the government could come up with a $61.88bn fund with low-cost financing from insti- tutes such as the World Bank. While states like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu,
Haryana and Delhi are known for their past fights over water allocation, the Maharashtra state government is to tackle water pollution through increased investments in sewage treatment, along with solid waste management. In a policy shift, the Maharashtra government is consider- ing public-private partnerships to raise funds for river cleaning. Similarly, the National River Conservative Plan of the Indian government is working on river cleaning projects across 150 stretches of Maha- rashtra, Gujarat, Assam and other states.
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