By Dr. Gyan Pathak
Serious data gaps exist in Ocean Ecosystem Accounts which is preventing the country to have true glimpse of the state of oceans in India. There are several threats to the coastal areas, of which soil erosion is one of the biggest.
EnviStats India 2024: Environment Accounts (7th Issue) released by National Statistical Office under the Union Ministry of Statistics &Programme Implementation revealed that 33.6 per cent shoreline along the 13 coastal States/UTs suffered erosion in during 1990-2018, though 39.6 per cent of the coast remained stable in nature and 26.9 per cent witnessed accretion.
The length of coastline across States/UTs in India is 7516.6 km. The coastal states are – Andaman & Nicobar (1,962 km),Gujarat (1,214.7 km),Andhra Pradesh (973.7 km), Tamil Nadu (906.9 km),Maharashtra (652.6 km),Kerala (569.7 km),Odisha (476.4 km),Karnataka (280 km), Goa – Daman and Diu (160.5 km), West Bengal (157.5 km), Lakshadweep (132 km), and Puducherry (30.6 km).
Highest level of erosion was suffered by West Bengal with 60.5 per cent, followed by Puducherry 56.2 per cent, Kerala 46.4 per cent, Tamil Nadu 42.7 per cent, Daman & Diu 34.6 per cent, Andhra Pradesh 28.7 per cent, Gujarat 27.6 per cent, Odisha 25.6 per cent, Maharashtra 25.5 per cent, Karnataka 23.7 per cent, and Goa 19.2 per cent.
As for mangrove coverage is concerned, it has been almost stagnated during 2019-21 at about 0.34 per cent compared to the assessment period 2017-19 when the increase was 1.1 per cent. As per ISFR 2021 mangrove were spread on 4,992 sq km (0.15% of total geographical area) out of which Very Dense Mangrove 1,475 sq km (29.55% of total Mangrove Cover), Moderately DenseMangrove1,481 sq km (29.67% of total Mangrove Cover), and Open Mangroves was 2,036 sq km (40.78% of total Mangrove Cover). Thus, Net Increase was only 17 sq km (Compared to ISFR 2019).
Ocean conditions have not also found satisfactory. Coastal Water Quality Index 2023-24 shows that at shore less than one kilometre into the ocean only Karnataka and Kerala coastal water was good while in all other states it was moderate. Upto five kilometer the third state Odisha was added to have good water index.
The publication emphasized that regular monitoring of the ecosystem extent is necessary for the formulation of conservation strategies and for an up-to-date account of its climate change mitigation potential. The coast is subjected to multiple coastal processes and anthropogenic pressures, making it vulnerable to erosion.
MoEFCC has also delineated the hazard line for the country’s entire coast. The hazard line indicates the shoreline changes, including sea level rise due to climate change. Drawing up a site-specific shoreline management plan and an Integrated Coastal Zone Management plan is essential for adequate shoreline protection, it says.
How sensitive India’s biodiversity is important for the world can be assessed by the fact that number of marine faunal species here are 20,444 in 2024 as against 2,47,605 in the world. Total number of species in India under other groups are 3383 out of 5,023 in the world, and total number of faunal species are 1,04,561 in the country compared to 15,71,751 in the world.
This shows the importance of the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA) and other data are concerned. The report has therefore suggested to estimate the services as an initial step in physical terms and subsequently based on the data availability, monetary estimates may be attempted.
The Government of India has taken several initiatives to harness the potential of ocean resources in sustainable manner. Some of them are– O-SMART (Ocean-Services, Modelling, Application, Resources and Technology), Deep Ocean Mission (DOM), Marine Spatial Planning, Blue Economy, Coastal Regulation Zone Management, and Marine Protected Area.
Though these services are crucial for the Ocean Ecosystem Account which are relevant while addressing several dimensions of ocean policy challenges like measuring blue economy, sustainability of ocean economic activities, synergy with area-based planning/ management, designing policy/ institutional reforms to manage the transition to a Blue Economy, etc, only limited data are currently available.
The current publication has covered only some parameters of ocean extent and conditions on the limited data regarding the enormous benefits to humankind that ocean ecosystems provide which included its provisioning services such as seafood, habitats, fuel, wood, energy sources, wetland protection and genetic resources; regulating services such as regulating weather and climate, protect coasts and sediment deposition, mitigate storm damage; cultural services such as recreational, educational, aesthetic, and spiritual; and support to economic services, such as economic activities, jobs, trade, transportation, fuel, energy etc.
Due to lack of data, this publication has only hinted at several areas of the Ocean Assets and benefits that can be derived from them. It admits that their valuation actually requires further exploration. The Framework for Ocean Ecosystem Accounts developed in one of the chapters of this publication has enormous scope for modification With more discussions with the stakeholders, the framework is likely to evolve to a further improved version. Also, addressing the data gaps will help in providing true glimpse of the state of oceans in India, the publication emphasized. (IPA
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