New Delhi: The Centre (click here) has notified a new set of rules for preservation of wetlands under which the states will have to identify water bodies to be brought under this category by March next year.
The Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017, notified on September 26, shall replace the earlier set of guidelines which came into effect in 2010.
However, under the 2010 rules, not a single water body was notified as a wetland over and above the ones already recognised as such by the Centre and the Ramsar Convention, defeating its purpose in a way.
The Ramsar Convention, which dates back to 1971, is an intergovernmental treaty aimed at the "conservation and wise use of wetlands". India became one of its signatories in 1982.
According to an Environment Ministry notification, wetlands are vital parts of the hydrological cycle.
These are highly productive ecosystems which support rich biodiversity and provide a wide range of ecosystem services such as water storage, water purification, flood mitigation, erosion control and aquifer recharge, it says.
With rapid urbanisation, it has also become a highly contentious subject with wetlands being encroached across the country by land sharks, leading to depleting ground water levels and floods in urban areas....
A common fear about preserving wetlands is the idea flooding will be worse with the wetland rather than filling it with dirt, etc. That is not the case. The best example is Hurricane Katrina in 2005. If the wetlands had been protected rather than destroyed by the petroleum industry, the storm surge would have been far lower. The wetlands would have created an barrier to all that water. The outcome to New Orleans would have been very different if the wetlands were in place. The USA government was told to protect the Louisiana wetlands and then "The Big One" came.
June 30, 2017By Ignatius Pereira
August 19, 2012, (click here) it will be 10 years since the brackish water Ashtamudi Lake with eight creeks was declared a Ramsar site by designating it as a wetland of international importance. The lake was recommended by the Ramsar Convention’s partner organisations as a wetland of 61.4 sq km. And the lake entered the Ramsar list as site number 1,204.
However, since then, the area of the lake has shrunk to 34 sq km and it is facing serious environmental degradation. Revenue authorities dispute the 61.4 sq km extent but agree that the lake may have shrunk by at least 5 sq km in the past 10 years.
Internationally there are 2,046 wetlands designated Ramsar sites and India has 25. The main purpose of declaring an important wetland as Ramsar site is to enable its conservation through local and national-level action with international cooperation for achieving sustainable development....
