The National Mission for Clean Ganga and World Wide Fund (WWF) India orgsed a seminar on Tuesday for the 'World Wetlands Day 2021' in New Delhi.
The seminar was orgsed with an objective to support and empower the District Ganga Committees in the identification of critical wetlands, assess the wetland health and draw up a plan of action for long-term conservation and management by engaging local stakeholders.
The event was inaugurated by Minister of State (MoS) for Jal Shakti, Ratan Lal Kataria while Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat joined the programme virtually.
The event witnessed the book launch related to Wetlands Guidelines for local stakeholders. Winners of Wetlands Quiz 2021 were also announced during the programme.
Rajiv Ranjan Mishra, Director General of the National Mission for Clean Ganga said Wetlands play a very important role for rejuvenation of river by way of contributing towards flow 'aviralta' as well as, helping us in maintaining unpolluted flow, contributing towards 'nirmalta'.
"We are to develop a kind of giving importance to wetlands conservation and linking it with river rejuvenation and scale it up to basin management, so this is one programme which is for the first time raising the level of wetlands conservation. We are working with several institutions as our partners in this regard, and to link every stakeholder," he said.
"On one hand, we are working for a scientific approach which is led down under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change through their wetlands rule. On the other hand, we are also bringing community participation in wetland conservation. And as we all know, wetland helps us in instigating floods, improving groundwaters; they are important sources of biodiversity conservation," he added.
Dr Arvind Kumar, President of India Water Foundation said, "This is our joint duty to all stakeholders, whether we are government or stakeholders, we can showcase our concern to utilization, conservation and preservation of the wetlands."
Wetlands are among the most crucial sources of fresh water. They are transitional areas of land that are either temporarily or permanently covered by water.
India is extremely rich when it comes to wetland diversity; from alpine wetlands in the Himalayas to mangroves in the coastal regions and corals in the sea and near the shore. Nearly 3.66 per cent of the country's geography is wetlands. Of these, the Gangetic wetlands are the largest riverine wetland system in India.
( With inputs from ANI )
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