Status of Wetlands 2025 _FB

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Status of Wetlands 2025 _FB

Reflecting on a decade of wetland conservation in India, I offer a
critical assessment and measured hope for Guidelines for
implementing Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules,
2017, which I had the privilege to help draft as a member (Hydrology)
of MoEF&CC, GoI.

When we proposed an "integrated approach" and
advocated for enumerating wetlands in land records to prevent
encroachment, we envisioned a transformative framework that would
halt the alarming degradation of these critical ecosystems.

Similarly, through my role in the Technical Advisory Committee for India's
Second and Third National Communication and Biennial Update
Reports to UNFCCC, we laid foundational strategies for sustainable climate adaptation and
mitigation, recognizing wetlands as nature's frontline defence against climate change impacts.

The reality check presented in this comprehensive report "Status of Wetlands 2025" is both
sobering and necessary. While India's designation of 91 Ramsar Sites making us Asia's leader
and the world's third-largest wetland network represents commendable progress, the
underlying statistics reveal a devastating truth: nearly 40% of our wetlands have vanished
over three decades, with 50% of remaining wetlands showing signs of ecological degradation.

The proliferation of man-made wetlands now constituting 71% of our wetland area signals
not innovation but desperation, a hydrological regime fundamentally altered by human
intervention. Cities like Chennai have lost 85% of their wetlands, Mumbai 71%, and Kolkata
36%, directly contributing to the climate disasters these urban centres now regularly face.
The implementation challenges we anticipated have materialized with concerning regularity.
Despite clear mandates for the enumeration of wetlands in land records, encroachment
continues unabated reports indicate that nearly 10% of water bodies in regions like Noida
face illegal occupation, sometimes even by government agencies themselves.

The decentralization approach through State Wetland Authorities, while theoretically sound, has
faltered due to inadequate institutional capacity, insufficient funding, and weak enforcement
mechanisms. Most critically, the exclusion of wetlands smaller than 2.25 hectares from legal
protection has created gaping loopholes that developers and encroachers exploit with ease.
This oversight is particularly troubling in urban contexts, where small wetlands play a vital
role in regulating surface runoff and mitigating urban flooding. For instance, in Seoul, South
Korea, the Cheonggyecheon Stream restoration transformed a concretized urban channel
back into a functioning wetland system, significantly reducing flood risk while enhancing
biodiversity and livability. Similar decentralized wetland systems across Indian cities could
serve not only as ecological buffers but also as critical infrastructure for climate resilience.
Ignoring the conservation of smaller wetlands, therefore, undermines both environmental
security and urban sustainability.


Yet, this report also illuminates pathways forward that align with our original integrated
vision. The emergence of community-based conservation initiatives, technological innovations in monitoring through satellite imagery and drone surveillance, and the growing
recognition of wetlands' economic value in climate adaptation present genuine opportunities.

The integration of wetland conservation with urban planning, the development of naturebased solutions, and the increasing awareness of wetlands' role in disaster risk reduction offer
hope for course correction.

As we stand at this crossroads, the choice is clear: we can continue with fragmented, reactive
approaches that have yielded mixed results, or we can embrace the transformative, systemic
change that wetlands and our climate-vulnerable nation desperately need. The guidelines we
crafted in 2017 remain sound; what we require now is the political will, institutional capacity,
and societal commitment to implement them with the urgency that our vanishing wetlands
demand.

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