Rejuvenating Ganga can help fight climate change

New Delhi: Rejuvenating the Ganga's waters and maintaining the river's purity can be one of the best ways to keep the Sundarbans alive and protect it from effects of climate change, NMCG Director General Rajiv Ranjan Mishra said. According to Mishra, it is crucial to have a minimum environmental flow in the river at all times to prevent the sea from degrading the soil, and making the groundwater unfit for drinking and irrigation. Climate change could accelerate salt water intrusion into fertile soils due to rise in sea levels. Excess groundwater extraction in dry regions of the world could also increase soil and groundwater salinity, he said. Due to climate change, the Sundarbans, one of the world's largest mangrove forest, faces several challenges. With rising sea levels, islands are disappearing and the increasing salinity in the water and soil has severely threatened the health of mangrove forests and the quality of soil and crops.

"In the monsoons, when the rivers are in full spate, they keep the saline waters of the Bay of Bengal at an arm's length by pushing them deeper into the sea. This prevents the saline water from entering the mangrove forests," Mishra told PTI.

However, when the water level recedes during the lean season, the saltwater pushes into the mangrove forest and even further into the farmlands, thereby destroying not just the crops but the soil for future cultivation. "Hence, it is extremely important to have a minimum environmental flow in the river at all times to prevent the sea from degrading the soil, making the groundwater unfit for drinking and irrigation," he said. The government has mandated the minimum quantity of water that various stretches of river Ganga must necessarily have all through the year. Mishra, who superannuates on Friday, further elaborated on his journey as the chief of National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) and also how the project to rejuvenate the river progressed, in his new book 'Ganga: Reimagining Rejuvenating Reconnecting'.

He has co-authored the book with Puskal Upadhyay, an IDAS official who has been a part of the mission. Mishra, an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and a 1987 batch IAS officer, said the book is an attempt to put in perspective the challenges, the new approach and thinking which developed the Namami Gange Programme into the most comprehensive river rejuvenation exercise. Noting that the 'sacred' river is now crying out for rejuvenation, Mishra said returning the Ganges to its virgin state, as officials of the NMCG realised soon enough, was an extraordinarily difficult and a complex task that called for cooperation and activism from all stakeholders on a mission mode, a perfect example of tackling the so-called 'wicked problem'.