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DOI: 10.14738/aivp.92.9618

Publication Date: 13th February, 2021

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/aivp.92.9618

Wetlands Ecosystem: A Sensitive Landscape of Unorganized

Non administered Services

Dr. U.V. Singh IFS (Retd), Deepthi Hebale

Member of Committee of National Green Tribunal and Member of Monitoring Committee of

Supreme Court India.

Research Scholar, Energy and Wetland Research Group Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian

Institute of Science, Bangalore. India.

uvsingh@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT

The association of man and wetlands is ancient, with the first signs of civilization originating in wetland

habitats such as the flood plains of the Indus, the Nile Delta and the Fertile Crescent of the Tigris and

Euphrates rivers. Evidence of the first wetland traces back to the Ordovician Period (485.4 million to

443.8 million years ago), As much 17.56% of the state’s geographic area (34.74 lakh hectares) has been

identified as wetland/waterbodies in the National Wetland Atlas of the Union ministery of

environment and forests. A total of 15.26 million hectares have been identified as wetland in India.

Gujarat is followed by Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra in the order.

Even the coastal Union territories of Diu and Daman have upto 18.46% of their total geographical area

as wetland, next only to Lakshadweep whose 96.12% of land area is wetland. India has totally 27, 403

wetlands/water bodies, of which 23,444 are inland wetlands and 3,959 are coastal wetlands.

According to the Directory of Asian Wetlands (1989), wetlands occupy 18.4% of the country’s area

(excluding rivers), of which 70 % are under paddy cultivation. In India, out of an estimated 4.1 million

hectares (MHa) (excluding irrigated agricultural lands, rivers and streams) of wetlands, 1.5 MHa are

natural, while 2.6 MHa are manmade. To declare any water bodies as wetland, it is manditorily be

notified by the Central Government, State Government and Union Territory Administration under the

Wetland Rules 2017.Presently there are 41 Ramsar notified wetlands in the country. There is no

notified wetlands/ Ramsar wetlands in Karnataka as on date. There is need of hour to introduce panel

provisions with Institutional authority in the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules,

2017. Also, provisions for constitution of district level authority shall be made under the Rules

with adequate powers for administration, management, development and conservation. Else,

there could be more meaningful, if instead Rules, an Act should be promulgated on the lines of Forest

(Conservation) Act 1980.

1 Introduction

Wetland ecosystem is the second most ancient ecosystem existing today on the earth planet. It is one

of the birth place of origin of life. It also acted as a transitional ecosystem from sea to land. It came to

exist much before to forest and wildlife. Wetlannds are complex ecosystem created by flooding or

saturation of the soil, which makes low-oxygen environments that favour a specialized assemblage of

plants, animals, and microbes, which exhibit adaptations designed to tolerate periods of sluggishly

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Dr. U.V. Singh IFS (Retd), Deepthi Hebale; Wetlands Ecosystem: A Sensitive Landscape of Unorganized Non

administered Services. European Journal of Applied Sciences, Volume 9 No 2, April 2021; pp: 49-76

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/aivp.92.9618 50

moving or standing water. It also encompass open water used by birds, the concept that originally

inspired the protection of wetlands and associated aquatic sites. Wetlands are usually classified

according to soil and plant life as bogs, marshes, swamps, and other similar environments in general

terms. Wetlands cover about 6% of the earth’s land surface.

Wetlands and the subdiscipline of wetland ecosystems are relatively new area of study in the field of

primary ecology. The premitive laws and other regulations were enacted only after 1970s. The term

wetland, however, was first used formally in 1953, in a report of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services

that provided a framework for a waterfowl habitat in the United States. Since then, wetlands have

been variously defined by ecologists and government officials. The definition emerged during the

Ramsar Convention, an intergovernmental treaty signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971 to guide national and

international wetland-conservation measures, is among the most widely referenced and adopted by

many countries.

Wetlands are areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or

temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt, including areas of marine water

the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six metres.

Origin of wetlands: Evidence of the first wetland traces back to the Ordovician Period (485.4 million

to 443.8 million years ago), when the first terrestrial vescular plants, which were dependent on wet

substrates, began to colonize the land. The first marshes and swamps appeared during the Devonian

Period (419.2 million to 358.9 million years ago). Swamps , the presence of extensive wetland habitats,

later dominated vast regions of southern North America during the Carboniferous Period (358.9

million to 298.9 million years ago), Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras (252.2 million years ago to the

present).

Glaciation during the Pleistocene period (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) caused to several types of

landscapes for the development of present-day wetlands. The flat, scoured landscape of Canada’s

Hudson Bay lowlands is one of the example of wetland originated during that period.

In some of the coldest parts of the world, wetlands are sustained by an impermeable layer of ice that

remains in the soil throughout the year. This perennially frozen ground, or permafrost, prevents both

the percolation of surface water into the ground and plant contact with mineral groundwater. About

20–22 percent of Earth’s land surface is close enough to a polar region or high altitude to experience

permafrost. Large part of northern North America and Eurasia, as well as the Mongolian and Tibetan

Plateaus, are affected by permafrost, and these regions are hosted with vast expanses of bogs, fens,

and peatlands. North America possesses some of the most extensive bog and fen regions on Earth. In

western Siberia, larch-spruce-birch forests form part of an enormous inland delta, which is the largest

contiguous area of peatlands in the world. Asian plateaus in general host some of the most unusual

high-altitude wetland ecosystems.

Some wetlands were created in some other ways during the periods of low sea level, when water was

locked in glacial ice. Following a drop in sea level, the coastal plain of the southeastern United States

was formed by the deposition of sediment that eroded from landscapes upstream. Rising sea levels

that followed the retreat of the glaciers reduced streamflow velocity, and many streams backed up.

These changes resulted in the formation of a variety of depressional, flat, and riverine wetlands which

ended approximately 11,700 years ago.

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Wetlands in nonglaciated regions such as the tropics of Indonasia and likewise were developed during

periods characterized by slightly different climates and conytinued changing under present-day

conditions. The peat swamp forests of Indonesia are built on peat up to 15 metres thick. The

accumulation of this material occurred during a wetter period several thousand years ago. Although

new peat is still forming in places where the region remains humid but in other tropical climate of the

present day is dry enough to allow the degradation of peat in some areas.

The biggest wetlands on the Earth: Wetlands the places where the land is covered by water, either

salt, fresh, or somewhere in between over 6% of the Earth's land surface. Sprinkled throughout every

continent except Antarctica, they provide food, clean drinking water, and refuge for countless people

and animals around the world. Despite their global significance, an estimated one-half of all wetlands

on the planet have disappeared.

Amid the loss, one specific wetland stands out on the planet is the Pantanal. Of more than 42 million

acres, the Pantanal is the largest tropical wetland and one of the most pristine in the world. It sprawls

across three South American countriesie Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay. This landscape supports millions

of people there, as well as communities in the lower Rio de la Plata Basin.

The Pantanal if overlaid on the US it would be bigger than New York, Florida, and Wisconsin, among

25 other states. The Pantanal islarger than at least nine countries, including England, Austria, Hungary,

Greece, and Ireland of the Europe.

A conservative, cumulative estimate of the size of the world’s wetlands places the figure at 1.4 billion

acres. Though only a fraction of that figure, the Pantanal remains more intact and pristine that most

other wetland systems.

This massive wetland has the largest concentration of crocodiles in the world, with approximately 10

million caimans. Jaguars, the largest feline in the Americas, hunt caiman in the Pantanal, which has

one of the highest density of jaguars anywhere the world. The Pantanal is also home to the biggest

parrot on the planet, the hyacinth macaw. Sighting these animals and others help attract the 1 million

tourists who visit the Pantanal every year. The areas that are protected are globally significant, with

parts that fall under an agreement called Ramsar that requires national governments to conserve and

wisely use wetlands, and some that are UNESCO World Heritage Sites and Biosphere Reserves. Around

95% of the Pantanal is under private ownership, the majority of which is used for cattle grazing

Wetlands in India: The Gujrat State is ahead of other states in the country in ecological richness

evident from the recent past National wetland inventory and assessment report prepared by the

Space Applications Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad.The largest amount of its landmass identified as

wetlands of different kinds. As much as 17.56% of the state’s geographic area (34.74 lakh hectares)

has been identified as wetland in the National Wetland Atlas of the Union ministery of environment

and forests.

Gujarat is followed by Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra in the order.

Even the coastal Union territories of Diu and Daman have upto 18.46% of their total geographical area

as wetland, next only to Lakshadweep whose 96.12% of land area is wetland.

A total of 1.526 million hectares have been identified as wetland in India. This report has been

prepared by the SAC after a gap of nearly two decades with the help ofsatellite images of much better

resolution than were available during the last mapping in 1992-93 (8.26 million hectares).