A long snout lined with sharp teeth slides above the water, followed by a broad back with a triangular fin. Then it is gone.
Spotting Ganga river dolphins in Northern India is tough. The muddy water hides them well and they are shy around boats. But their rarity is mostly down to the massive degradation of their home.
Now, sightings of the endangered dolphins and other wildlife are rebounding, conservationists say, thanks to a concerted effort to restore India’s most sacred river, which is an economic lifeline for more than 500 million people and supports countless species.
For nine years, cities along the Ganga have worked to stanch the flow of pollution into the river while reviving landscapes along the waterway and its tributaries. The scope and early successes of the initiative, called Namami Ganga, have led to its selection as a World Restoration Flagship. Awarded under the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the accolade recognizes ambitious efforts to revive the natural world, which is labouring under a triple crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste.
“Restoring the Ganga will safeguard both the natural systems and human societies that the river has nurtured for millennia,” said Leticia Carvalho, Head of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP’s) Marine and Freshwater Branch. “Appreciating and caring for all of our rivers, and their links to oceans and seas, will be vital to improving people’s lives while also tackling the greatest challenges facing our planet.”
The Ganga flows 2,500 km from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. Its basin covers a quarter of India and houses more than 40 percent of its 1.4 billion people. It accounts for more than one-quarter of national freshwater resources. Some 40 percent of the country’s economic output is produced here.
But India’s rapid economic progress and burgeoning population have taken a heavy toll on the river and its tributaries. Urbanization, industrialization and extraction for irrigation have seriously degraded and depleted the water and the land along its banks.
“Maybe the last 20, 25 years we have found that the water quality has come down drastically," said G. Asok Kumar, Director General of the National Mission for Clean Ganga, which is implementing the Namami Gange programme. “That's where the wake-up call came in."
Stopping pollution
In 2014, the Indian government unveiled an action plan that included investments of more than US$4 billion to clean up the Ganga. Much of the funding is going into preventing sewage and industrial effluent from pouring into the river untreated. New treatment plants are to handle 5 billion litres of wastewater every day.
A goal is to improve the water quality in major cities such as Haridwar, Kanpur and Varanasi, including at the riverside temples where millions seek good fortune and absolution from sin through a dip in the Ganga, or bathe the dead before cremating them and spreading their ashes in the water.
Another focus has been on planting and growing native trees along watercourses, which helps prevent pollutants and sediment from entering the river and stores millions of tons of climate-harming carbon. So far, some 30,000 ha of land in the basin has been returned to forest, the government says. The 2030 target is 135,000 ha.
To further reduce the pollution and overextraction of river water, the government is promoting sustainable farming.
Farmers are being encouraged to replace chemical fertilizer and pesticides with more natural options, such as alternatives made from cow dung and plant extracts, or by ploughing in cover crops. Such approaches can also boost soil’s ability to retain moisture.
Kumar said farmers’ fears of falling yields have proven unfounded. "Nature is helping them to increase the productivity of the soil, rejuvenating it, making it more organic and reducing water consumption."
Engaging communities
Another arm of the initiative has sought to improve public awareness and has engaged hundreds of organizations and communities in ecosystem conservation and restoration. This includes fisherfolk who are as dependent on the health of the river as the dolphins.
.jpg)
"We have already started seeing results," said Goura Chandra Das, a conservationist who monitors the river’s wildlife in order to inform restoration efforts. “After we have spoken to local communities, whenever dolphins get stuck in their fishing nets, they've made special efforts to safely rescue the dolphins from their nets and release them into the wild."
The dolphins, believed to number a few thousand at most, are just one of the estimated 25,000 species of plant and animal found in the Ganga basin, including 143 aquatic animals. Other key species for conservation include softshell turtles and otters. The hilsa shad, a prized food fish, has reportedly returned to several parts of the river system.
This week delegates at the United Nations Water Conference, a landmark summit on the state of the world’s freshwater resources, highlighted the successes of the Namami Gange programme. It was hailed as a case study for other countries struggling with river pollution.
Kumar hopes similar efforts will be rolled out in other basins in India and beyond.
“The biggest learning that this Namami Gange project gives us is that nothing is impossible,” Kumar said. “This will be a tremendous hope for the next generation because water is going to be a very vital resource."
About the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration
The United Nations General Assembly has declared the years 2021 through 2030 the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Led by the UN Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, together with the support of partners, it is designed to prevent, halt, and reverse the loss and degradation of ecosystems worldwide. It aims at reviving billions of hectares, covering terrestrial as well as aquatic ecosystems. A global call to action, the UN Decade draws together political support, scientific research and financial muscle to massively scale up restoration.
What is a World Restoration Flagship?
Countries have already promised to restore 1 billion hectares – an area larger than China – as part of their commitments to the Paris climate agreement, the Aichi targets for biodiversity, the Land Degradation Neutrality targets and the Bonn Challenge. However, little is known about the progress or quality of this restoration. Progress of all 10 World Restoration Flagships will be transparently monitored through the Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring, the UN Decade’s platform for keeping track of global restoration efforts.
With the World Restoration Flagships, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is honouring the best examples of large-scale and long-term ecosystem restoration in any country or region, embodying the 10 Restoration Principles of the UN Decade.
