‘New wetland management rules a complete disaster’

NEW DELHI: The new wetland management rules notified by the Centre are a “total disaster” and expose the ecologically fragile water bodies to further destruction rather than preservation, experts have said.

The central government had on September 26 notified the 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, shall also replace the earlier set of guidelines which came into effect in 2010.

Professor Brij Gopal, who was involved in drafting the 2010 rules, said in the name of decentralisation, the latest notification has done away with all forms of accountability.

Water activist Manoj Mishra, who spearheads the Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan, said the new rules were in line with a clear approach taken by the government that environmental protection was a “dispensable luxury”.

Gopal, a former professor of Environmental Science at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, said the rules which envisage creation of state and Union Territory Wetland Authorities, did look “good on paper” but were actually potentially disastrous.

“The states have been asked to identify and notify wetlands in their territories, but what if they do not? What is the penalty for violations? Who is going to be accountable and where does the obligation lie?” he asked. 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.

The Ramsar Convention, which dates back to 1971, is an intergovernmental treaty aimed at the “conservation and wise use of wetlands”. India became its signatory in 1982.