A bird’s eye view of Najafgarh jheel. Image: Google Earth
- Notifying the Najafgarh jheel as a wetland and restoring it to its full ecological health could help make Delhi “inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”.
- The jheel is a transboundary water body straddling Delhi and Gurugram, and officials of Delhi and Haryana recently submitted two plans to ‘manage’ it.
- If the plans are implemented properly, the jheel could ameliorate the water woes of southwest Delhi and Gurugram and aid birds that migrate along the Central Asian Flyway.
According to Alessandra Tanesini, a professor of philosophy at Cardiff University, collective amnesia is a form of amnesia that happens when collective memories are shaped by mechanisms that strongly promote ignorance.
Najafgarh jheel [footnote]Hindi for a waterbody caused by inundation, typically a lake[/footnote] is a water-body straddling Delhi and Gurugram, and once spanned 220 sq. km. But it has been rendered invisible by collective amnesia – thanks to the government’s apathy and the people’s ignorance of their natural heritage.
Activism by some NGOs – including Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH)[footnote]The author volunteers to work with its principal director[/footnote] – and private citizens has drawn the attention of the National Green Tribunal on two occasions. And its judgements established that Najafgarh jheel is a transboundary water-body. In its September 17, 2020, order, the tribunal required Delhi and Haryana to file one environment management plan (EMP) each for Najafgarh jheel. Delhi did so in December 2020 and Haryana did so last month.
According to INTACH principal director Manu Bhatnagar, Delhi’s and Haryana’s EMPs specify immediate, medium-term and long-term measures to manage the jheel, in up to five years. They aim to help Najafgarh jheel deliver its full range of ecosystem services. To this end, both plans discuss institutional arrangements, water management, biodiversity conservation, research and capacity development and budget/financing.
The first deliverable among the immediate measures is to have the jheel notified as a wetland. This will afford the water-body legal protection against further encroachment and reclamation. But that is some time away: the notification will require officials to reconcile the two EMPs and decide the jheel’s boundaries.
The EMPs also propose the constitution of a ‘Najafgarh Wetland Committee’ to subsequently manage it. Such management is to be based on the principle of ‘wise use’ – which will be realised when the wetland is able to provide its full range of ecosystem services and sustain its biodiversity, now and in future, guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
The Najafgarh jheel can already buffer floods, recharge groundwater and regulate the microclimate by virtue of being a heat and carbon sink. In fact, according to Bhatnagar, if the EMPs are properly and fully implemented, the jheel can become central to the National Capital Region’s ability to mitigate the local effects of climate change.
The present permanent inundation level of the jheel – up to 209 metres above mean sea level – yields a large lake of area 8 sq. km. In future, Bhatnagar said, the lake’s area could be increased to 25 sq. km, with a permanent inundation level of up to 210 metres above mean sea level. He also estimated that an 8 sq. km jheel could meet the water needs of 0.5 million people, and a 25 sq. km jheel, up to 1 million. It could thus also alleviate the water woes of Gurugram and southwest Delhi in the near future.
In addition, even with its currently low quality of water, the jheel is very important to the birds that visit it. According to the EMPs, the jheel hosts 281 species of birds, with a population of nearly 30,000 at one point.
Crucially, the jheel lies in the path of birds that use the Central Asian Flyway, an avian highway that straddles 30 countries and facilitates the southward migration of birds in winter. Unfortunately, the loss or deterioration of many stopover points and breeding grounds has threatened the survival of many species. So ecologically restoring the Najafgarh jheel could help reverse the birds’ fortunes for the better.
This in turn feeds into how the EMPs plan to create zones in the jheel. One possibility is to divide it into ‘active’ and ‘silent’ parts by tearing down sections of the embankment on the Delhi side, which has less vegetation. The remaining parts of the embankment, which have denser vegetation, could be developed as bird sanctuaries, constituting the ‘silent’ zone. Popularising local residents in bird-watching could provide an income and bolster the importance of this zone.
The ‘active’ zone, on the other hand, can host recreational and commercial activities. The latter could comprise sustainable fisheries, organic farming, creation of useful items from water hyacinth harvested from the jheel, and ecotourism. Improving the jheel along aesthetic lines will likely also increase the value of land in the area, benefiting local land-owners. (The government could also lease the land designated for permanent submergence from its owners, to begin with.)
Last, the jheel can be developed into a waterway as well, to ferry people from Gurugram through Najafgarh drain to Yamuna and to the Okhla barrage, and vice versa. This can be achieved by desilting the drain’s main stem and cleaning the water.
The UN’s SDG 11 aims to “make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Notifying the Najafgarh jheel as a wetland and restoring it to its full ecological health is sure to help Delhi and Gurugram achieve these important goals – and thereon to guide similar efforts in other parts of the country.
Ritu Rao is a PhD research scholar at the Teri School of Advanced Studies, New Delhi, working on urban water-bodies sustainability.