WETLAND CONVERSATION AND MANEGMENT NEED OF

CONSERVATION
Wetland conservation is aimed at protecting and preserving areas where water exists at or near the
Earth's surface, such as swamps, marshes and bogs. Wetlands cover at least six per cent of the Earth and
have become a focal issue for conservation due to the ecosystem services they provide. More than
three billion people, around half the world’s population, obtain their basic water needs from inland
freshwater wetlands. The same number of people rely on rice as their staple food, a crop grown largely
in natural and artificial wetlands.
Efforts to conserve wetlands in India began in 1987 and the main focus of governmental efforts
was on biological methods of conservation rather than adopting engineering options. A national
wetland-mapping project has also been initiated for an integrated approach on conservation. In
certain wetland sites it is heartening to see the Government, NGOs and local community
coming together to save our wetlands and thus realize the objectives of Ramsar Convention.
The National Committee on Wetlands, Mangroves and Coral Reefs, constituted for advising the
Government on appropriate policies and measures to be taken for conservation and
management of the wetlands, has identified 93 wetlands for conservation and management on
priority basis.
CONSERVATION RUELS AND REGULATIONS
The new rules, notified by the environment ministry, decentralise wetlands management by
giving states powers to not only identify and notify wetlands within their jurisdictions but also
keep a watch on prohibited activities. Seeking to protect over 2 lakh wetlands across the
country, the Centre has come out with rules to identify and manage these ecologically fragile
areas which play an important role in flood control, groundwater recharge, preserving plant
varieties, supporting migratory birds and protecting coastlines. The new rules, notified by the
environment ministry, decentralise wetlands management by giving states powers to not only
identify and notify wetlands within their jurisdictions but also keep a watch on prohibited
activities. It also indirectly widens the ambit of permitted activities by inserting the 'wise use'
principle, giving powers to state-level wetland authorities to decide what can be allowed in
larger interest. The notification says, "The wetlands shall be conserved and managed in
accordance with the principle of 'wise use' as determined by the Wetlands Authority." The
Centre's role under the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017, will be
restricted to monitoring its implementation by states/UTs, recommending trans-boundary
wetlands for notification and reviewing integrated management of selected wetlands under the
Ramsar Convention — an international arrangement to preserve identified wetlands. Wetlands
provide vital ecosystem services. They supply water, improve water quality, support primary industries, provide
flood and storm mitigation, act as a carbon sink, provide habitat for biodiversity and threatened species and
provide communities with recreation and tourism. They are often places of significance for Indigenous people.

COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
The Union environment ministry has been working for the past four years to create a regulatory
framework to protect the country’s wetlands. In June 2008, it framed rules to protect wetlands.
The draft was criticised by lawyers, environmentalists, activists and people dependent on
wetlands. In December 2010, the ministry revised the rules under the Environment (Protection)
Act, 1986, and called them Wetlands (Management and Conservation) Rules, 2010. Down To
Earth sought comments on the rules from people involved in conserving wetlands. The
Government of India should enact a wetland conservation act, on the lines of the Forest
Conservation Act, 1980. But it should also consider the views of people dependent on wetlands.
Millions of acres of village, semi-urban and urban wetlands are controlled by gram panchayats
or city administrators. Most often administrators have no interest in protecting them and
succumb to land sharks easily. Many times, wetlands are “inspected” during peak summer,
when they have no water, and allocated to land sharks as wastelands. India is a signatory to the
Ramsar Convention which slots irrigated agricultural lands, and canals under wetlands. But the
wetlands conservation rules, 2010, does not have river canals paddy fields and the coastal
wetlands in their ambit. Paddy fields are under water for more than six months and in certain
areas like Kerala they are under water throughout the year. So paddy fields should not be
excluded from wetland conservation. Not conserving these fields will seriously affect food
security and groundwater sources. Tamil Nadu, for example, has lost about 600,000 hectare of
paddy fields after Independence. The framers of the rules have no idea of small ponds in the
country, both in urban and rural areas. The draft rules do not have the term “pond” , though
they do use a roughly similar term, “tank”. They are not sensitive to the way ponds and tanks
are managed. For example, the rules do not permit “construction except boat jetties within 50
meters from mean high flood level of water bodies”. But thousands of small ponds have
bathing stairs(Ghats) and bathing facilities within this restricted area. Area surrounding ponds
are also places for recreation. Will such recreation be banned? There are heritage structures
like temples, mosques near ponds which require maintenance and development. If the draft
rules become an act, these activities will be illegal. The rules mandate “prior approval from
state for aquaculture and horticulture”. Most ponds and tanks are used for aquaculture and the
earnings from these activities are the only source of financing maintenance. The forest
conservation law recognises only certain categories of forests as worthy of conservation. If a
stakeholder or an environmentalist wants legal protection for a forest not in the list, then he or
she has to file a public interest litigation in courts. We might face similar situation with respect
to wetlands, if the draft rules become an act. People might have to take help of the court if they
need legal protection to save wetlands not listed. Today, the government controls all wetlands
in the country. The involvement of society is almost minimal. The government ought to become
a facilitator‚ while society should become caretaker of wetlands. Significant decisions pertaining
to the conservation and welfare of wetlands should be initiated by the end-users of water
bodies. Their suggestions should provide guidelines for decision-makers in higher levels of
government. I fear the wetlands rules are a subterfuge to regularise encroachments on
shrunken wetlands. The rules do consider “overall well being of the people”. But I believe this
should be rephrased to “overall improvement of ecosystem” to preclude encroachments and
construction activities on wetlands. For the same reason, the section “expedient in the public
interest” should be rephrased with “expedient in the environmental interest”
Ramsar convention of Wetlands
The Convention on Wetlands is an intergovernmental treaty adopted on 2 February 1971 in the
Iranian city of Ramsar, on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. Thus, though nowadays the
name of the Convention is usually written “Convention on Wetlands (Ramsar, Iran, 1971)”, it
has come to be known popularly as the “Ramsar Convention”. Ramsar is the first of the modern
global intergovernmental treaties on the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources,
but, compared with more recent ones,its provisions are relatively straight forward and general.
Over the years, the Conference of the Contracting Parties has further developed and
interpreted the basic tenets of the treaty text and succeeded in keeping the work of the
Convention abreast of changing world perceptions, priorities, and trends in environmental
thinking. The list of Ramsar sites (related to wetland) in India comprises
Indian wetlands deemed to be of "international importance" under the Ramsar Convention.
For a full list of all Ramsar sites worldwide, see the Ramsar list of wetlands of international
importance. According to WWF-India, wetlands are one of the most threatened of all
ecosystems in India. Loss of vegetation, salinization, excessive inundation, water pollution,
invasive species, excessive development and road building, have all damaged the country’s
wetlands The Sunderban Reserve Forest, spread over 4,260 sq. km. with over 2,000 sq. km. of
mangrove forests and creeks, was declared a Ramsar Site on 1 February 2019 making it the
27th Ramsar site in India.

USE OF MORDEN SCIENTIFIC METHOD

A method of monitoring roots rarely used in wetlands will help Oak Ridge National Laboratory
researchers effectively study the response of a high-carbon ecosystem to elevated
temperatures and levels of carbon dioxide. Colleen Iverson, ORNL ecosystem ecologist, and an
international group of experts, worked to develop a consensus on the use of minirhizotrons, or
tiny video cameras that take images of roots, in wetlands. Minirhizotrons are an improvement
over previous technology because they don't harm the plants and allow researchers to examine
a living root in the context of a soil environment. “One of the benefits of minirhizotron
technology is the ability to track the birth and death of individual roots," said Iverson. "Root
activity is integral to plant survival in wetlands that store a substantial amount of carbon in
deep soil organic matter deposits but have limited nutrients available for plant uptake and use.
“Ultimately, the minirhizotrons will be placed in a black spruce bog in Minnesota, the site for
the multi-year experiment SPRUCE, or Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Climatic
and Environmental Change. Chambers placed in the site will allow researchers to manipulate air
and soil temperatures and levels of carbon dioxide in an intact bog – a wetland that
accumulates a deposit of dead plant material. Understanding and improving the capabilities of
these mini cameras will help the SPRUCE researchers study fine roots, which are responsible for
plant water and nutrient uptake. “Minirhizotrons are the best way to get at the dynamics of this
short-lived and important root population, especially in a long-term experiment like SPRUCE
where we can't be too destructive in our soil measurements," Iverson said. One of the reasons
scientists are interested in high-carbon ecosystems like the Minnesota uptakbecause they cover
only three percent of global land surface, but store nearly one-third of terrestrial carbon. If the
planet continues to warm, researchers hypothesize that bogs will dry out and more oxygen will
be made available for microbial decomposition, which could lead to a massive release of carbon
into the atmosphere, resulting in more warming. Additionally, more precise studies of roots will
help researchers effectively model roots and be able to better predict what role they will play in
nutrient cycling and storing carbon belowground.