Western countries buying back floodplain land to save rivers
NEW DELHI: Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravishankar might have justified the World Culture Festival on the Yamuna floodplains by giving examples of cities around the world that hold similar festivals but he is behind time.
Cities across the world have been working on plans to free the floodplains because of the increasing danger of flooding.
The Rhine and the Danube (Germany), the Loire (France), and Skjern (Denmark) are rivers that lost their floodplains and marshland. But they might get them back in the coming years with the respective governments working on policies to buy back this land.
The 2013 floods in Europe were the trigger for action. Areas that lay on floodplains were inundated because of construction on the eco-sensitive zone.
Over the years, knowledge about managing river sys- tems as well as pollution has changed. From a situation where rivers we returned into mere canals and sewer dumping grounds, the focus now is on giving the river its land back, especially after the European floods.
In Europe, most rivers are like canals in the city — with their embankments of concrete. According to Fred Pearce, a UK-based environment author, while engineers in Europe have been cleansing rivers of pollution for half a century, they now are trying to restore them to something similar to their natural state.
Environmentalists in India say western countries managed to clean their rivers by shutting polluting industries and exporting them to developing countries. The developing nations also concretised floodplains and turned their rivers into canals – an example followed in Sabarmati that experts criticise.