Sanctuary Asia – July 2019

Sanctuary |Cover Story

SHAUNAK MODI

The Marine Life of Mumbai, a citizen’s collective, is performing a remarkable

feat of generating interest about the city’s marine life through regular shore

walks, talks and other interactive events.

COASTAL COMMONS TO COASTAL ROADS:

Loopholes and Legal Issues

The Coastal Road Project has five pending petitions as of

April 30, 2019, in the Mumbai High Court. The main reason for

concern is the zero to low public consultation in the project

and absence of scientific studies and impacts on the marine

biodiversity in the proposed coastal zones of Mumbai. Unlike

past public infrastructure projects, that had direct stakeholder

consultation with the affected communities, with mitigated

measures and solutions, this particular project has relied on the

Environment Clearance (EC) from the Ministry of Environment,

Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC), without fulfilling the

two major natural stakeholder requirements in case of the

coast and the coastal road. The two main natural stakeholders

being 1) The intertidal marine biodiversity and 2) The traditional

• artisanal coastal communities in the proposed coastal road
  areas. Approaching common urban people who access these
  spaces on the promenade or otherwise is a whole other issue
  that the project has not even considered as stakeholders to
  be consulted.
  The Coastal Road Project will reclaim land from the sea to
  build an eight-lane highway that will connect South Mumbai to
  the suburbs (LiveMint 2019). The focus on connecting the city
  has been viewed with a singular centred – grand vision of it
  being the saviour of traffic snarls and its related issues that will
  decongest Mumbai’s roads. However, this approach as observed
  in the development phases of the Coastal Road Project, has
  not completely understood the policy and legal protections
  that the city’s coast is safeguarded under, to protect sensitive
  intertidal marine ecologies and the marine biodiversity of the
  city and native-traditional fishing communities dependent on it.
  According to the current coastal policy that governs India’s
  coastline, the Coastal Regulation Zone notification (CRZ) 2011,
  the notification states CRZ-I A and B as
  ‘Classification of the CRZ for the purpose of
  conserving and protecting the coastal areas and marine
  waters, the CRZ areas shall be classified as follows,
  namely :- (i) CRZ-I A (The areas that are ecologically
  sensitive with geomorphological features which play a
  role in maintaining the integrity of the coast) and B (The
  areas between the Low tide line and High tide line).’
  The reclamation of the coastal road proposed
  and ongoing is within CRZ-I A and B areas.

Sarita Fernandes is a Coast

and Marine Policy Researcher an

Conservation Officer for Sagarshakti

(Coastal and Marine Research Division

for Vanashakti).

chunks of the intertidal zone. The same intertidal that is protected

under the Coastal Regulatory Zone (CRZ) notifi cation. According

to this document, the intertidal zone comes under section CRZ-I

B where certain “reclamation activities are allowed, including

foreshore facilities like ports, harbours, jetties, wharves, quays,

slipway, bridges and sea links, etc.” However, CRZ-I A protects

unconditionally, certain animals in “ecologically sensitive areas and

the geo-morphological features which play a role in maintaining

the integrity of the coast.” These include corals, found across

Mumbai’s coasts.

This is the equivalent of a forest being razed down. Over

the last two years, the Marine Life of Mumbai project on the

iNaturalist database holds over 2,000 observations (from 337

species), verifi ed by global experts. Imagine what more lives in the

parts that isn’t yet in the public record.

So, while we use the protection that a few creatures enjoy

from the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, the entire coastline is

under threat and will be impacted either directly or indirectly. And

in that, the city itself.

CLIMATE CHANGE AT OUR SHORES

Nikhil Anand, an author and scholar of infrastructure, urbanism and

environment, writes in The Wire about the city’s precarious history

with its waterways.

To quote an excerpt from the piece: “Writing after Hurricane

Katrina, which destroyed over 70 per cent of the city of New

Orleans in 2005, Neil Smith insisted that ‘there is no such thing

as a natural disaster’. Disasters, he argued, were the results

not just of wind and rains, but the ways in which these interact

with urban policy, infrastructure and social vulnerability. A TERI

Environmental Status Report, commissioned by the MMRDA

SHAUNAK MODI

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