Weak official response to the pollution of Bengaluru’s wetlands threatens public health
The extraordinary sight of a lake in Bengaluru on fire,
with a massive plume of smoke that could be seen from afar, is a
warning sign that urban environments are crashing under the weight of
official indifference. If wetlands are the kidneys of the cities, as
scientists like to describe them, Karnataka’s capital city has entered a
phase of chronic failure. No longer the city of lakes and famed
gardens, it has lost an estimated 79% of water bodies and 80% of its
tree cover from the baseline year of 1973. Successive governments in the
State have ignored the rampant encroachment of lake beds and catchment
areas for commercial exploitation, and the pollution caused by sewage,
industrial effluents and garbage, which contributed to the blaze on
Bellandur lake. The neglect is deliberate, since some of the finest
urban ecologists in the city have been warning that government inaction
is turning Bengaluru into an unliveable mess. It is time the State
government took note of the several expert recommendations that have
been made, including those of the Centre for Ecological Sciences of the
Indian Institute of Science. The priority, clearly, is to end pollution
outfalls into the water bodies, which will help revive them to an
acceptable state of health. Identifying all surviving wetlands and
demarcating them using digital and physical mapping will help
communities monitor encroachments, while removal of land-grabbers and
restoration of interconnecting channels is crucial to avoid future
flooding events.
Loss of natural wetlands is an ongoing catastrophe in India. A decade
ago, when the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History
released a conservation atlas for all States using space applications,
it reported the tragic fact that 38% of wetlands had already been lost
nationally; and shockingly, in some districts only 12% survived. The
Centre has since issued rules for conservation and management, and
chosen 115 water bodies in 24 States for protection support, but this is
obviously too little. Moreover, research studies show that the
concentration of heavy metals in such sites is leading to
bioaccumulation, thus entering the plants and animals that ultimately
form part of people’s food. It should worry not just Bengaluru’s
residents, for instance, that soil scientists have found higher levels
of cadmium in green vegetables grown using water from Bellandur. More
broadly, the collapse of environmental management because of multiple,
disjointed agencies achieving little collectively and legal protections
remaining unimplemented pose a serious threat to public health. Every
city needs a single lake protection authority. India’s worsening air
quality is now well documented, and most of its wetlands are severely
polluted. Citizens must assert themselves to stop this perilous course.
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