India has 69.2 million acres wetland, lacks ‘Wetland Policy’

India has 69.2 million acres wetland, lacks ‘Wetland Policy’

Pune: While India has around 69.2 million acres of wetland area, what the country lacks is a comprehensive wetland policy. The present management and guidelines for the states to look after the management of their wetlands is under the Wetlands Regulatory Laws.

“India is obligated to have a Wetland Policy. Usually, a policy is formed first, and then you have the laws. But the government has dictated the rules first. Attempts were made to form a draft for the policy three-four times, but it was never accomplished,” Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) Trustee BC Choudhury said.

The Wetland (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2010, and the changes that were made in Wetland (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017 are under the National Environment Policy, 2006.

Need for policy
“The part of Central Asian Flyways (CAF) in India is geographically more dominant and has a greater variety of wetlands. As per our analysis, around 47 per cent of our flora and fauna is obliged to the wetlands, and hence we need an act to conserve them,” Choudhury said.

As per the data presented by Choudhury, India supports 17 out of the 22 types of wetlands that exist in the world.
 
“These wetlands are used and abused largely by everyone. However, since there is no one authority upon whom we can pin the responsibility of their protection and conservation, there is no proper management. Those wetlands that have been identified under Ramsar Convention fall under the jurisdiction of the Centre, some have been looked after by the forest department. Without proper assigned authority, wetlands have been suffering. Even those under the Ramsar Convention are not well-maintained,” he added.

A Ramsar Site is a wetland site designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, an intergovernmental environmental treaty established in 1971 by UNESCO, which came into force in 1975.

How effective are the regulatory laws?
In 2010, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) drafted the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2010 for ensuring better protection of wetlands. The rules identified industrialisation, construction, dumping of untreated waste, etc. as activities harmful to the wetlands.

“These rules have been ignored by everyone. There is waste dumping in several wetlands and constructions also take place. The states were asked to prepare brief documents regarding their wetlands under these regulations, however, hardly any accomplished the task. The Centre has never shown any effort towards implementing these rules,” environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta said.

In 2017, the MoEF replaced the regulatory rules with the new Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017.

“In 2017, the Government removed human-made water bodies like tanks from the purview of wetlands. Even salt pans were no longer considered as wetlands. But any environmentalist would know that wetlands under these two criteria have rich biodiversity and need to be conserved,” said Neha Sinha of Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS).

What exactly should be called ‘Wise Use’?
The Wetlands Rules emphasise that conservation and management of wetlands would be based on the principle of ‘wise use’, which needs to be determined by the Wetlands Authority.

“Who decides what is wise use? At the Kolleru wetland in Andhra Pradesh, which is also a Ramsar and a wildlife sanctuary, the area is mostly owned by the people. Almost the entire wetland here is used for aquaculture (breeding, raising and harvesting of fish and aquatic plants). The people have set up nets around the wetland to prohibit birds from coming and eating the fish in the wetland. There is large-scale use of chemicals for aquaculture, not to mention, birds are hunted and poached too. So, how is this wise use of the wetland?” Sinha questioned.

She added that instead of blindly promoting the term ‘wise use’, there is a need for a proper plan to determine how the ecological and wise use of  wetlands could be brought about, without hurting its ecological character.

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