A breather for mangroves

In Mumbai, mangroves are fast making way for apartment complexes. - SHASHI ASHIWAL

The Bombay High Court orders a freeze on destruction of mangrove forests in Maharashtra and bans construction within 50 metres of them, besides outlining other aspects it wants implemented. But it is not clear how serious the government is in heeding the orders.

THE thick mangrove forests of Mumbai are a thing of the past, but if a recent order of the Bombay High Court is implemented, the few remaining patches on the coastline may yet be saved.

In a judgment delivered on October 6, the Bench of Chief Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice Dr. D.Y. Chandrachud left no one in doubt when it said: "There shall be a total freeze on the destruction and cutting of mangroves in the entire State of Maharashtra." The order banned the dumping of debris in mangrove areas (a common underhand way to reclaim land) and forbade "any authority" from granting permission for development activity in them. The Bench said no applications for development should be entertained "regardless of the nature of ownership" of the land. It also banned construction within 50 metres of mangroves. The two Judges asked the Coastal Zone Management Authority (CZMA) to file monthly reports to the court. They also authorised the Principal Secretaries of the Forest, Revenue and Environment Departments to ensure compliance of the order.

The judgment was in response to a Public Interest Litigation petition filed last year by the Bombay Environmental Action Group (BEAG) "seeking urgent measures for the protection and preservation for the fast depleting mangrove forests" along the Maharashtra coast. In keeping with the spirit of people's action, the court directed the State government to assign the District Magistrate and the Deputy Commissioner of Police to act on complaints from the public.

As the first step towards saving this much-abused coastal vegetation, the court has asked for a study of mangroves using high-resolution satellite maps. Some maps made in 2005 by the Maharashtra Remote Sensing Application Centre were presented during the hearings. The court has asked for a more detailed mapping of the Mumbai and Navi Mumbai areas and it expects the information to be transferred on to a cadastral or city survey map by April next year.

The order also said that by next June the government would have to notify the mangroves it owned as "protected forests" and the privately owned ones as "forests". The final stage of handing over the government lands to the Forest Department would have to be completed by August 2006.

The Forest Department has been given the task of clearing debris from mangrove land and prosecuting those abusing such land. It will also have the responsibility of replanting mangroves in areas where the growth is less than 40 per cent.

Debi Goenka of the BEAG sees many advantages in the Forest Department being given the responsibility of managing mangroves. For one, it has its own guards, he says. He also says that once mangroves are notified as forestland, changing the land-use pattern will be difficult because of the strict guidelines set down by the Supreme Court.

While the terms of the High Court order are straightforward, they will not be easy to implement. Everything hinges on proving which is mangrove land and which is not. "Satellite mapping is the only foolproof way of establishing the mangrove areas," says Goenka. At present there are satellite maps of the Maharashtra coastline for the years from 1989 to 1991 and for 1996, 2000 and 2005. The authorities and builders would be hoping that post-1998 maps are followed because that would imply the acceptance of the 1998 Coastal Zone Management Plan. "They want to forget the earlier plans," says Goenka. Prior to 1998 there had been a construction boom, and implementing the "earlier plans" would have proved uncomfortable for builders.

There is perhaps a double advantage in placing all the satellite maps before the court. It will help define clearly the mangrove areas and, through a comparison of the maps, also reveal the time period in which the mangroves were destroyed. For instance, between 1997 and 1998 about 3,400 square metres of mangrove in Malad, a north Mumbai suburb, was reduced to 1,400 square metres. A gigantic mall came up on the 2,000 square metres that had been filled in rapidly by dumping debris.

A favourite ploy of builders is to claim that the land was already in existence. They do this in collusion with the local authorities, and many builders have got away with a lot of illegal reclamation. Satellite maps can prove them wrong and perhaps expose the unholy nexus.

While explaining the importance of mangroves for coastal protection, the petitioners had drawn on the examples of mangrove-protected areas versus areas stripped of mangroves in the context of the tsunami. During the floods in Mumbai on July 26, areas with mangrove land could absorb all the rainwater and areas where the mangrove zone had been reclaimed suffered severe flooding. In fact, the minimal flooding in Vikhroli, a northern suburb, and its surrounding areas was attributed to the 20-year-old Godrej Mangrove Project - about 1,750 acres (700 hectares) of mangrove that has been allowed to regenerate and now forms a magnificent cloak on that section of the coastline.

THE court's order is sure to have far-reaching effects and has meant different things to different people. For the 1,5000 residents of the Guzdar Scheme and Saraswat Colony, the monsoon season has been a nightmare for the last five years. The heavy rain and high tide invariably leave the areas under one metre of water. Worse, the nearby creek overflows into the apartment blocks, taking with it filth from the sewage system. This happens 12 to 15 times in a season. As a result, real estate prices on the Guzdar bund road fell to about Rs.5,000 a square foot from around Rs.10,000. Residents of the colony blame it on the destruction of the 25-acre (10-ha) mangrove forest to make space for illegal constructions.

Gautam Rao, chairman of the Guzdar Scheme Residents Trust, says the construction began in the late 1980s. By 2001, a government survey showed that there were 8,315 structures. All 25 acres of the mangrove had been wiped out. With the mangroves gone, the capacity of the land to absorb water has been greatly reduced. The mangroves and the sluice gates in the creek ensured minimum flooding or none at all during high tide or heavy rain. Now, disbursing the excess water is a crucial issue. Rao says vote-bank politics ensured that Guzdar Scheme residents bore the brunt of the floods. "The municipality removed the sluice gates. There is no way we can prevent the flood waters from entering the colony."

The government's promise to relocate slums in more permanent dwellings has also backfired because of local politics. Those that did shift to the newer residences soon sold or rented them and returned to the slums. The outcome is that there are still 8,300 hutments, when, by the government's calculation and resettlement plan, this figure ought to be less than 7,500. "After four years, 40 High Court hearings, 22 High Court orders in our favour, seven meetings with the Chief Secretary and after spending Rs.19.5 crores in taxpayers' money, the government of Maharashtra cannot remove 1,364 encroachers," says Gautam Rao.

The court order is silent on the fate of the land reclaimed from the mangrove forests, but it is obvious that this matter will be taken up at a later stage. Already there is a clause that says "obstructions that impede the growth of mangroves [should be removed] as also the impediments which restrict the flow of sea water in the mangrove area."

While the court is determined to preserve the mangroves, the State government does not seem to be similarly inclined. In April, the High Court delivered an interim judgment on this issue, directing that the destruction of mangroves be halted. Despite this, dumping of debris continued and complaints of local residents were not taken seriously. That the court thought it fit to deliver the order by a special messenger to Chief Secretary Prem Kumar's office is seen as a reflection of its seriousness as also a statement on what it thinks about the State's commitment to the implementation of the order.

However, at a meeting organised between the Mumbai Police and citizens' groups on October 11, five days after the court's order was published, senior police officers were unaware of it and said they had yet to see it. This is despite the fact that the order specifically stated that "The Chief Secretary... is directed to send a circular to all concerned Collectors/Deputy Commissioners of Police/Superintendents of Police and all other concerned officials to ensure meticulous compliance of this order."

The court has set November 16 as the date "for further directions and to ensure implementation of [the] order". On that date, perhaps, the State government's intentions on the mangroves will become clear.