Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s suggestion of constructing at least 50 large ponds to divert water from the Brahmaputra River and store it in those ponds has left experts flummoxed and confused, with people left scratching their heads about the suggestion. Chairing a high-level meeting to review the preparedness of flood management, Shah said that the construction of large ponds “will help in developing agriculture, irrigation, and tourism in those areas at a low cost and also help in tackling the floods and will eventually benefit the local economy.”
The statement of Shah comes at a time when monsoon has already wreaked havoc across the northeast, leaving several people dead in Mizoram and damaging several infrastructure projects across the northeast. However, the idea that digging ponds across the northeast would somehow mitigate floods has not been met with approval from experts, who are struggling to understand the rationale behind the idea.
Wrong priorities
Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, an independent researcher based in Guwahati, who completed his PhD on Sino-Indian transboundary water interactions in the Brahmaputra river basin, raised concerns over the plan to construct artificial ponds to mitigate flooding and boost agriculture and tourism. Rahman emphasized the need to address the destruction of existing wetlands before embarking on new projects.
“Please examine first the rampant destruction of already existing wetlands in Assam in the past two decades by the government,” Rahman urged. “All that the government needs to do is to do nothing, and not run after idiosyncratic ideas without any environmental impact assessment done for these ideas! The government interventions in infrastructure development are destroying wetlands across Assam at a faster pace. First, stop that,” Rahman told EastMojo.
Rahman also highlighted the disconnection of wetland ecosystems due to unchecked development. “Wetland connectivity has gone for a toss. Why do we need new artificially constructed ponds and lakes, just for big contractors to earn money and destroy critical topsoil and increase erosion inland? It is a disaster in the making!” he warned. “This idea is going to concretize many rural areas and disrupt them in the name of eco-tourism. The government has a very short-sighted idea of natural sinks of water versus artificial sinks of water. In the future, we will lose all our ‘beels’ and all we will be left with will be ‘bills’ passed in the Assam Assembly sanctioning artificial ponds and lakes.”
Why not save what we have?
Just last week, EastMojo published a detailed report on the misplaced priorities of the Assam government, which seemed far more interested in ‘beautifying’ Deepor Beel, Assam’s only Ramsar site, instead of addressing the factors that are causing a slow and painful death of the wetland.
A study titled “Evaluation of the influence of land-use and land-cover changes on ecosystem services in Deepor Beel Ramsar Site using high-resolution remote sensing” by Sameer Mandal, Kasturi Chakraborty, and Biman Kr. Dutta, focused on the impact of land use and land-cover changes (LULCC) on the ecosystem services of the Deepor Beel wetland, an important freshwater lake in Assam, India.
The findings indicated that the built-up area in the catchment rose from 3.94% in 2003 to 16.60% in 2018, with an average annual growth rate of 21.40%, which is the highest compared to all other land-use/land-cover change (LULC) categories.
The loss of agricultural land from 5.5% to 1.25% in the catchment area was another major LULC change in the study area. All other LULC classes, including water spread, forest areas, grasslands and water bodies, declined over the years. However, there has been an increase in the aquatic vegetation category from 1% in 2003 to 1.83% in 2018.
Worryingly, agriculture, grasslands and forest areas have declined while built-up areas have expanded from the boundary of the wetland to the 500 m buffer. The area under aquatic vegetation also increased in the buffer zones. of 50, 100, 200, 300 and 400 m. The maximum increase in built-up areas of 49.57% and 44.18% was observed in the 500 and 100 m zones respectively. The close buffer zone of 50 m also showed an increase in built-up area (22.59%) between 2003 and 2018.
Dhrupad Choudhury, an independent consultant and facilitator, formerly Chief of Scaling Operations at ICIMOD, echoed Rahman’s sentiments.
“Ironic isn’t it?” he asked.
“Assam is known for its Beels – large, natural water bodies that have always functioned as critical safety valves for excess water storage and regulation of floodwaters,” Choudhury remarked.
“Assam’s towns were dotted with ponds and small water bodies that again, served as important water management instruments, critical in controlling waterlogging and flooding. Today, with every urban conglomerate being taken over by the building mafia, ponds and water bodies have been filled up, and the Beels have been encroached. Witness Deepor Beel as you drive to the airport; as you cross Dharapur point you can witness how the Beel and the drainage to the Brahmaputra are being encroached on and filled in by the ‘developers’ – destroying the very system that used to act as a safety valve and control flooding. And now, you suggest large ponds? Why can’t this government protect the Beels and wetlands of the State and control unregulated encroachment of water bodies and ponds? This also shows how out of touch these politicians are from ground realities!” he added.
Partha J Das, Head of the ‘Water, Climate and Hazard Division’ at Aaranyak, provided a detailed analysis of the proposed plan.
“Given the complex nature of flooding in the region and the fragile floodplains and valleys of the rivers, such a proposition triggers several questions in our minds,” Das noted. “What is the science and research behind this idea? Will it be easy to dig ponds in the hilly areas of the northeast? Will ponds in the plains of Assam be effective in holding the huge volumes of floodwaters of the Brahmaputra laden with large amounts of sediment? How large will these ponds be? Can only 50 ponds, however large they are, absorb the floodwaters of about a hundred rivers in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Sikkim? Will the scientists and engineers of the NE region endorse this recommendation?”
Das emphasised that a more effective flood moderation strategy would be the rejuvenation of existing large and medium-sized natural wetlands located on river banks and connected hydrologically to rivers and other wetlands.
“Assam’s 3,000 plus freshwater wetlands, locally known as beels and several other names, have played very important roles in benefitting the rural people ecologically and socioeconomically over hundreds of years. The wetlands have historically helped in moderating flood intensity by storing floodwaters. Restoring the wetlands and maintaining their eco-hydrological health will help in reducing flood risk to a significant extent at a local scale.”
He cautioned against simplistic solutions for the complex flooding dynamics in the Brahmaputra river catchment. “Given the complicated nature of the flood dynamics in the Brahmaputra river catchment, keeping in mind the inter-state and transboundary regimes of many of these rivers, factoring in the impact of climate change, and considering the highly populated and intensely built-up riparian areas with a lot of public and private infrastructure, the efficacy of using wetlands as a flood moderation strategy may also be limited.”
Das advocated for a combination of structural, non-structural, and nature-based solutions implemented at local levels through a decentralized mechanism with community participation. “Application of state-of-the-art science, technology, and innovation while recognizing the utility of traditional knowledge and practices will be key to such approaches. The problem is huge and complex. The solution cannot be that simple when it comes to execution. We have to think more realistically,” he said.
The experts collectively call for the protection and restoration of Assam’s natural wetlands and beels, cautioning against the hasty implementation of artificial pond construction without thorough scientific assessment and environmental impact studies.
Also Read: Can’t beautify if it is dead: Why locals are against ‘revamping’ Deepor Beel
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