© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
(The UPSC Essentials Indian Express is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel and stay updated with the latest updates.
Subscribe to The Indian Express UPSC Key and prepare for the Civil Services and other competitive examinations with cues on how to read and understand content from the most authoritative news source in India.
Note: Catch the UPSC Weekly Quiz every Saturday evening and brush up on your current affairs knowledge.)
Take a look at the essential concepts, terms, and phenomena from the static and current parts of the UPSC-CSE. Don’t miss the MCQ and Point to ponder in the end of the article.
Subject/Topic: Government schemes
Relevance: New government schemes and policies announced in the Union Budget are relevant directly and indirectly for Prelims, Mains and Personality Test. Not just facts, but analysis and background details may be a part of important UPSC questions. This scheme revolves around the much in news — Mangroves. We go Beyond the word to discuss 2 case studies which can be utilised as good fodder to your answers and the importance of mangroves from The Indian Express article by Ranjit Lal.
Why in news?
— In the Union Budget 2023-24 presented on Wednesday (February 1), Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a new MISHTI scheme.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
What is MISHTI scheme?
— Union Budget 2023-24 states:
“Building on India’s success in afforestation, ‘Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats & Tangible Incomes’, MISHTI, will be taken up for mangrove plantation along the coastline and on salt pan lands, wherever feasible, through convergence between MGNREGS, CAMPA Fund and other sources.”
Why mangroves?
— Mangroves have been the focus of conservationists for years and it is difficult to overstate their importance in the global climate context. Mangrove forests — consisting of trees and shrub that live in intertidal water in coastal areas — host diverse marine life. They also support a rich food web, with molluscs and algae-filled substrate acting as a breeding ground for small fish, mud crabs and shrimps, thus providing a livelihood to local artisanal fishers.
— Equally importantly, they act as effective carbon stores, holding up to four times the amount of carbon as other forested ecosystems. Mangrove forests capture vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and their preservation can both aid in removal of carbon from the atmosphere and prevent the release of the same upon their destruction.
Mangrove Alliance for Climate (MAC)
— At the 27th session of Conference of Parties (COP27), this year’s UN climate summit, the Mangrove Alliance for Climate (MAC) was launched with India as a partner. The move, in line with India’s goal to increase its carbon sink, will see New Delhi collaborating with Sri Lanka, Indonesia and other countries to preserve and restore the mangrove forests in the region.
— Attending the event in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, the Union Minister for Environment Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav said that India is home to one of the largest remaining areas of mangroves in the world — the Sundarbans — and has years of expertise in restoration of mangrove cover that can be used to aid global measures in this direction.
— An initiative led by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Indonesia, the Mangrove Alliance for Climate (MAC) includes India, Sri Lanka, Australia, Japan, and Spain. It seeks to educate and spread awareness worldwide on the role of mangroves in curbing global warming and its potential as a solution for climate change.
— However, the inter-governmental alliance works on a voluntary basis which means that there are no real checks and balances to hold members accountable. Instead, the parties will decide their own commitments and deadlines regarding planting and restoring mangroves. The members will also share expertise and support each other in researching, managing and protecting coastal areas.
The current state of the mangroves
— South Asia houses some of the most extensive areas of mangroves globally, while Indonesia hosts one-fifth of the overall amount.
— India holds around 3 per cent of South Asia’s mangrove population. Besides the Sundarbans in West Bengal, the Andamans region, the Kachchh and Jamnagar areas in Gujarat too have substantial mangrove cover.
— However, infrastructure projects — industrial expansion and building of roads and railways, and natural processes — shifting coastlines, coastal erosion and storms, have resulted in a significant decrease in mangrove habitats.
—Between 2010 and 2020, around 600 sq km of mangroves were lost of which more than 62 per cent was due to direct human impacts, the Global Mangrove Alliance said in its 2022 report.
(A) Case Study 1
Apple grant to help protect and restore Raigad mangroves with help from local community
— A 2,400-hectare mangrove ecosystem in Maharashtra’s Raigad district will be among Apple’s focus areas as it works to support communities around the world worst impacted by climate change. With a grant from the tech giant, Applied Environmental Research Foundation (AERF) will work with the local community to protect the mangrove forest, which provides an important buffer against climate change.
— As part of the partnership, AERF will ink conservation agreements with local community members and support them in exchange for conserving and protecting the mangroves on their land, a release said. The goal of the partnership, which will try to be a self-sustaining one, is to help transition the local economy to one that relies on keeping mangroves intact and healthy.
Apple’s grant will also support the restoration of mangroves across a 50-hectare area where they have degraded. It will also purchase and distribution portable bio-stoves that allow people to cook without cutting down mangroves for firewood.
— AERF will also engage Conservation International to verify the climate benefits of the mangroves, accounting for the carbon sequestered in both the trees and soil. Along with protecting coastal communities from climate impacts like the unpredictable monsoons and rising tides like in Raigad, mangroves act as “carbon sinks” that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in their soil, plants, and other sediments.
— AERF director Dr Archana Godbole called the partnership a great opportunity to explore “how mangrove conservation and community benefits can go hand in hand”. “Though mangrove conservation issues are diverse and different in each place, here in our project area, opportunities are also many. Training our young, enthusiastic team as well as local communities for blue carbon will surely help us travel a long way to achieve mangrove conservation in this vibrant coastal area along the Arabian Sea.”
— Conservation International’s blue carbon finance project in Cispatá Bay, Colombia, supported by Apple was the first in the world to adequately and accurately measure not only the carbon that mangrove trees store in their trunks and leaves but also what they sequester in their soil. AERF will apply the learnings from this project to their work in Raigad, and later scale it across India.
(Source: Apple grant to help protect and restore Raigad mangroves with help from local community)
(B) Case Study 2
The innovative reforestation technique to save mangrove forests
— The sensitive ecology of mangrove forests in India is being harmed by growing industrialisation and climate change. However, some restoration methods have the potential of restoring the declining mangroves.
— Susanta Nanda, an Indian Forest Services officer shared a video of the fishbone channel plantation method being implemented in Odisha’s Bhitarkanika wetlands.
— While sharing the video, Nanda explained, “The water from creeks in Bhitarkanika are being diverted to gaps in mangroves through fish bone shaped channels, so that the saline barren land becomes fertile to support planted mangrove species. The shape allows the water to reach every nook and corner of the area.”
— According to the Gujarat Forest Department, the fishbone channel plantation technique is used to artificially inundate areas that do not get regular tidal inundation. By flooding dried-up wetlands near the intertidal zones, new mangroves can be reforested.
— A report published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies says that the fishbone channel plantation technique helped revive the mangrove cover in the Krishna Wildlife Sanctuary in Andhra Pradesh.
( Source: This innovative reforestation technique is saving mangrove forests)
(C) The importance of mangroves, as explained by Ranjit Lal
Mangroves thrive in a hostile environment, and like a very good counsellor, sooth the seething temper of a vengeful sea when it roars ashore, seeking what we have robbed from it. They usually consist of small, shrubby, highly specialised plants, of which there are over a 100 species. They stick it out at the muddy edges of the coast, absorbing the corrosive action of salt water (which can peel the skin off your body if you’re immersed for too long), filtering mud and sediment, and putting away more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into “long term storage” than any of the world’s forests. NASA has called them “the best carbon scrubbers”.
And what do we do with them? We diss them: mangrove forests are difficult places to explore, what with their glutinous mud, spiky foliage and root systems and the ever-changing water levels (depending on the tides). Ask any hardboiled “survival expert”, who will say that it’s virtually impossible to traverse them. We generally react as if they are stinking swamps, filled with unhealthy vapours, which will make us ill and even kill us. Yet, they are technical marvels: their roots grow upwards, sticking out into the air from the mud, which enables them to breathe and deal with the low oxygen levels in the cloying mud. They have sophisticated salt-filtering systems that can remove excess salt from the water and which we could potentially adapt for desalinisation plants. They filter out heavy metals from the mud and deposit rich sediments. Their extensive root system slows down the tumult of the sea, preventing the sort of erosion that we recently saw in Kerala. Their greatest recent accomplishment was the taming of the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 which killed so many people on unprotected coastlines. The mangroves on our eastern shores behaved rather like a car’s impact-absorbing bumpers and crumple zones, swallowing the massive energy and impact of the waves.
For us, mangrove swamps and mangrove forests may seem inhospitable, but for around 174 species of marine mega fauna, they’re home. They provide a secure dwelling for oysters, algae, barnacles, sponges, shrimps and mud oysters. They’re where those quirky odd land-loving fish, the mudskippers, emerge from with every ebb and flow of the tides.
Mangrove forests grow in warm tropical and subtropical tidal areas like estuaries and marine coastlines. According to one report, the total area in India under mangroves is 4,921 sq. km, a little over three per cent of the world total. Our largest and most famous mangrove forest is, of course, the Sundarbans (literally meaning beautiful forest), spanning both India and Bangladesh, and which has been declared a World Heritage site and a Biosphere Reserve by Unesco. It is the largest delta clothed in mangrove forests and vast saline mudflats in the world. It is home to the fiercest and the largest number of Royal Bengal tigers in the world. The Sundarbans is also a haven for birds (over 250 species), reptiles, and fish (120 species) and its beehives have tempted honey gatherers to risk their lives. It serves as a flood barrier to Kolkata, protecting the city from the ravages of cyclonic activity which is all too common in this area.
Our second-largest mangrove habitat is Bhitarkanika on the Odisha coast, an important Ramsar wetland featuring saltwater crocodiles and the largest-known nesting area for Olive Ridley sea turtles. Over 220 species of birds have been recorded here, including 57 winter migrants and over 80 nesting species.
On our western coast, even maddening Mumbai has its mangroves, protecting it from tidal surges and some of these have been put on death row. According to one report, between 1972 and 1975 over 200 km of the Maharashtra coast was covered with mangroves, and by 2001, there was just 118 km left.
Be it mangroves, rainforests, protected areas, river systems, they’re all up for pillaging. Meanwhile, mangroves, in their quiet introverted way, continue their work, soothing the angry seas, cleaning up the muck we deposit in them, providing a home and nursery for a myriad of creatures and hoping to give even the most hard-bitten “survival expert” a very muddy, glutinous and frustrating time indeed.
(Source- Down in Jungleland: The importance of mangroves by Ranjit Lal)
Point to ponder:What happens if all mangroves are destroyed?
MCQ:
Which of the following schemes announced in Budget 2023 is related to mangroves?
(a) PRANAM
(b) PRASHAD
(c) MISHTI
(d) None of the above
Share your views, answers and suggestions in the comment box or at manas.srivastava@indianexpress.com
