The future lies at sea

The future lies at sea

For a country that has a 7,000 kilometre coastline, the oceans hold the key to India's ecological future. Yet after studiously ignoring the environmental problems of this sector, all that the government has been able to do is to come up with is a Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification under the Environment Protection Act issued in 1991 which purports to guard the coastline from harmful activity.

But successive governments have been trying to get around the Act after pressure from various lobbies. Now the government has come up with another draft of the Ocean Regulation Zone (ORZ), but this too was stalled because of a continuing inter-ministerial tug-of-war.

This indifference has had a deadly fallout. Says Dr Rashmi Mayur, advisor to the United Nations on environmental issues, ``In the Thane bay area during a study I conducted in 1991 I found that children had developed neurological disabilities. Further investigation revealed that this was caused by mercury peroxide, an effluent from a nearby paintfactory. The mercury peroxide settled in the muscles of these children and rendered them permanently disabled.''

Mayur's is an almost apocalyptic vision. According to him, the oceans that wash the shores of peninsular India are turning into a large sewer, a floating garbage dump of land-based pollutants where a reported 6.5 million tonnes of garbage is dumped annually.

While India is banking on the ineffective CRZ that has become toothless, the proposed ORZ is yet to be gazetted. The CRZ notification under the MoEF maintains that the coast must be kept clear of all activities at least up to 500 m from the high tide line. However, exceptions to the notification, have been the rule.

Observes Shyam Chainani, the Mumbai-based environmentalist, ``With lobbying the area has been reduced from 500 metres to a mere 200 metres.'' Chainani, a honorary secretary of the Bombay Environmental Action Group, has been petitioning successive governments to take some pro-active action on the issue. He is more than willingto use every piece of legislation to help him in his crusade. Says he,``A soldier uses whatever weapon he has. If we have the CRZ in whatever form, let us use it.''

P.C. Sinha, secretary, Foundation for Conflict Resolution, New Delhi, agrees,``The more layers of protection in whatever form, the better.'' He has taken a look at the newly-proposed ORZ but is disappointed with it. ``An overall impression which an analyst derives after going through the ORZ draft document is that it is the CRZ extended into the ocean space without taking into consideration its functional capability and the implementation strategy.''

He believes that once the ORZ comes into effect it will be subject to the same controversies that has dogged the CRZ since 1991. Says Sinha,``The CRZ was thought to be anti-development. It proved to be unpopular and in many coastal areas like that of Kerala, the builder's lobby is totally against it.''

And that is only half the story. The ORZ was originally proposed by the Department of OceanDevelopment (DoD) in 1996. Since then the ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) is sitting on it.``They believe that they do not have the expertise. But giving DoD the go ahead would mean that the MoEF would lose control,'' says Sinha. Unlike the CRZ where the nodal agency is the MoEF, the DoD governs the ORZ. And therein lies the rub. As Sinha puts it,``The DoD feels that it should be made solely responsible for the environment of the ocean. If asked to enforce the ORZ, the MoEF will have an enforcement problem. It's been three years since the ORZ was drafted. It is already too late as a major portion of the mangrove ecosystem is lost,'' says Sinha. He is afraid that after the objections and other bureaucratic rigmaroles this piece of legislation could die a slow death.

Sinha has an alternate solution strengthen the existing Maritime Zones Act (MZA) and give it more teeth. ``One needs a single enforcement agency, preferably the MoEF to act on the protection of an integrated ecosystem. The MoEF shouldhave an ocean cell whose responsibility it will be to exclusively look into environmental matters related to the oceans. The MZA of 1976 has no green element in it and is at present ineffective. It needs to be strengthened. With this there would be no need for an ORZ. In the end we need an integrated coastal and marine area management plan,'' says Sinha.

In the meantime 30 to 40 per cent of our coastline is already a dead zone, says Mayur. ``Every year a quarter million plastic bags are dumped into the sea. Thirty percent of our rich mangrove forests are already lost to us.''Pointing to the tragedy that unfolds on the ship breaking yards of Bhavnagar in Gujarat, Mayur points out that while a whole generation is being disabled and deformed, a recent Supreme Court judgement has allowed ship breaking activities to continue. ``The results of toxins released during the process can already be seen among workers and their children who have developed deformities.''

Yet, tragically, the ocean as an ecologicalsubject does not exist in national discourse, with even the NGO community remaining largely indifferent to it. ``There has already been an ingress of saline water into coastal Gujarat,'' says Mayur. He wants steps to be taken so that the government does not play with CRZ controls. Even economically the results of this neglect are evident. From an estimated 6 million tonnes of fish in 1991, today India's produce has declined to only about 2 million tonnes. Experts feel that by the year 2010 it will be down to half a million tonnes.

Protect our oceans they are crucial to our future. They absorb nearly 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, which ensures that the energy balance of the world is maintained. After all, say ecological experts, the climate is controlled by the oceans.