The new Coastal road promises to reduce the travel-time
between the Western suburbs of Mumbai and the City area, decongesting roads and
allowing for quick transit between these two areas. Whether these goals can be
feasibly achieved, and for how long will they be sustained, is a completely
different matter altogether (In the late 1990s, several flyovers were built on
the Western Expressway with the promise of reducing peak-hour travel time
between Bandra and Borivali to 30 minutes. Today, within a gap of 16-odd years,
it takes 90 minutes or more.) There are a lot of arguments being made against
the construction of this road- alternate options for decongesting traffic, the
killing of the marine biodiversity we possess, destruction of livelihoods of
several communities, etc. While these are all issues I hope to discuss in the
days to come, what I’d rather discuss is one of the several sacrifices we’d be
making to construct this grand road- Mangroves.
Now, mangroves are an unsexy topic. If you ever were to
visit any, chances are you’d find them littered with plastic bags, mud and
weird-looking insects and amphibians. We do not understand them, nor do we
understand the need to have such mangroves in a city that obviously needs more
people for the human beings living in it. However, they’re a lot more crucial
to us humans than we’d like to believe.
Carbon
Catastrophe
We all hear people discussing the need for protection of
tropical rainforests, for they store carbon and pump the air with high amounts
of oxygen. However, a research carried about by U.S. forest services and a
group of University scientists show that mangrove forests store up to four times more carbon than most other
tropical forests in the world. Which makes them crucial in the task of
stabilizing climate change and reducing our gigantic carbon footprint.
The Coastal Road will require the claiming of about 186
hectares of mangrove forests. Every single hectare over here stores four times
the amount of carbon than most tropical forests. This destruction of mangroves
will also not be a solitary incident- these permissions give the people in
power the authority to change the structure of all the mangrove forests located
in and around Mumbai, and indeed, the nation- Power that could worsen the
already crippling fact that the world’s mangrove forests have experienced a 30-50% decrease in size and numbers in
the last 50 years alone.
Mangrove deforestation overall contributes to generating
greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to about 10% of carbon emissions from
global deforestation (0.02-0.12 petagrams of carbon per year)
.
Saving away
for a rainy day.
According to a report published by The Nature Conservancy
and Wetlands International, mangroves reduce a wave’s height by as much as 66%.
This provides an extremely crucial buffer against storms, tsunamis, and
hurricanes. No walls can be as economical or effective as these mangroves. How
do we know that? Let’s look at what nations hit by tsunamis are doing to
prevent further disasters-
Philippines is establishing and restoring 180 hectares of
mangroves and beach forest plantations over 11 towns that were affected by the
super typhoon Yolanda. The country is recovering from the effects of a devastating natural calamity by
establishing mangroves in affected areas. We are destroying a co-incidently
similar amount of forest land, while our way of dealing with possible storms in
the future will be walls. Walls, which do not provide for water retention,
crucial for reduction in flooding and water acccumalation, and will expectantly
involve huge maintenance expenditure.
A UNFAO(United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization)
report stated that the Cyclone Sidr that hit Bangladesh in 2002 had a reduced impact due to the mangrove protection provided by the
Sunderbans. It also added that Myanmar, which has heavily damaged by the
cyclone Nargis, would have been better protected had it not been for the
large-scale destruction of mangroves that has been happening there for the past four
decades, having lost half its mangrove area since 1975. The Indian Ocean
tsunami of December 2004 showed that areas with mangroves, such as Sri Lanka,
suffered less damage than those without mangroves.
Obviously, if our mangroves keep on disappearing, we are
going to have huge troubles when dealing with heavy rainfall, and perhaps even natural
disasters such as tsunamis: Problems that Mumbai will have to deal with in the near future. To tackle these problems better, we simply cannot give up a natural ally. With climate change turning into a bigger and
bigger issue day by day, water levels around Mumbai are expected to rise. When buffer zones such as mangroves disappear, the cost of protecting our city will shoot through the roof- An enormous expense we can easily evade.
Mangroves act like sponges, taking the pressure out of the
high tide. Building walls will increase concretisation, reducing infiltration
of water into the earth. Mangroves hold the soil together, preventing erosion,
which in term ensure that a lot of the water headed towards Mumbai is either
absorbed into the ground or its pace is drastically reduced. Here is an article which will perhaps explain
in a more detailed manner the link between rainfall, mangroves and the Coastal
Road- http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/standpoint-why-the-coastal-road-is-a-mistake-mumbai-cannot-afford-to-make-2109038
Mangroves are incredibly important for maintaining
ecological diversity and the survival of innumerable species which have just as
much as a right to live on our planet as we do. We destroy thousands of such
species, damaging habitats beyond repair, every time we destroy a mangrove
forest. However, I won’t talk about their lives over here. I’d rather appeal to
our own self-centred side, our own idea of self-preservation.
Reclaimed land has been disastrous in the past. The Mithi river’s mouth was affected due to
reclamation, which in turn worsened problems during the 2005 floods in Mumbai.
Beaches such as Dadar Chowpatty have been eroded due to reclamation, along with
the city’s coastline being altered, sea levels and tidal currents being
changed. This plan has given us very little success before, causing a lot of
damage in the long run.
Joining the
tiny, insignificant dots.
The water levels around Mumbai will soon be rising rapidly,
largely due to Global Warming. We can expect harsher rains, and looking at the
development plans we have in mind, our carbon emissions too are going to
increase.
Traditionally, any cutting down of Mangroves had to be made
up for by planting 5 times the number of mangroves taken down. However, the Union
Environment and Forests Ministry has reduced this number to 3 times the number
of mangroves taken down for this particular project. It also hasn’t mentioned a
specific location for replantation. Previously, the mangrove park that was
supposed to come up near the Navi Mumbai International Airport has also been
done away with by the NDA government at the Centre.
We are not only reducing the protection that we have enjoyed
against the sea for several decades now, but our current measures too are
ineffective and poorly implemented. We are behaving like the artery stated
above, taking a short cut route which will ultimately adversely affect the
citizens themselves.
An element that significantly contributed to controlling the
carbon emissions in this city is being systematically destroyed. Walls can be
no protection against the tides, a fact that other nations have understood. We
will be losing out on the oxygen provided by these mangroves. Furthermore, the
felling down of these 186-odd hectares will be followed by other areas in this
city, state and country being targeted.
The Coastal Road is no necessary evil. There are some
alternatives available at improving the travel conditions between the Western
suburbs and Mumbai City. These, I hope to discuss with you within a few days.
Sources-
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Replanting-mangroves-cut-for-infra-gets-short-shrift/articleshow/48024357.cms
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