The Union Budget for 2023-24 announced an initiative for mangrove plantation along the coastline and on saltpan lands, under MISHTI (Mangrove Initiative for Shoreline Habitats & Tangible Incomes).

MISHTI

• MISHTI is a new programme that will facilitate mangrove plantation along India’s coastline and on salt pan lands.
• This new programme will aim at intensive afforestation of coastal mangrove forests.

Implementation strategy

• The Budget states that MISHTI will be implemented through convergence between-

1. MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme),
2. CAMPA (Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority) Fund and other sources.

What are Mangroves?

• Mangroves are salt-tolerant plant communities found in tropical and subtropical intertidal regions.
• They are important refuges of coastal biodiversity and also act as bio-shields against extreme climatic events.
• With the threat of climate change and frequent tropical storms looming large, planting more mangroves is a welcome development for India which has a coastline of about 7,500 km.

Mangroves in India

• India has about 4,992 sq km (0.49 million hectares) of mangroves, according to the Indian State of Forest Report (IFSR) 2021.
• Mangroves in India are distributed across nine States and three UTs with West Bengal having the highest mangrove cover of 2,114 sq km.
• The IFSR report also points out that there has been an increase in the mangrove cover from 4,046 sq km in 1987 to 4,992 sq km in 2021.

Why protect mangroves?

• Infrastructure projects — industrial expansion, shifting coastlines, coastal erosion and storms, have resulted in a significant decrease in mangrove habitats.
• Between 2010 and 2020, around 600 sq km of mangroves were lost of which more than 62% was due to direct human impacts, the Global Mangrove Alliance said in its 2022 report.

Importance of mangroves

• Biodiversity: Mangrove forests — consisting of trees and shrub that live in intertidal water in coastal areas — host diverse marine life.
• Fishing grounds: They also support a rich food web, with molluscs and algae-filled substrate acting as a breeding ground for small fish, mud crabs and shrimps, thus providing a livelihood to local artisanal fishers.
• Carbon sinks: Equally importantly, they act as effective carbon stores, holding up to four times the amount of carbon as other forested ecosystems.
• Cyclone buffers: When Cyclone Amphan struck West Bengal in May, its effects were largely mitigated by the Sundarbans flanking its coasts along the Bay of Bengal.

Threats to Mangroves

• Anthropogenic activities: They are a major threat to the mangroves. Urbanization, industrialization and the accompanying discharge of industrial effluents, domestic sewage and pesticide residues from agricultural lands threaten these fragile ecosystems.
• Saltpan and aquaculture: This causes huge damage to the mangroves. Shrimp farming alone destroyed 35,000 hectares of mangroves worldwide.
• Destruction for farming: 40% of mangroves on the west coast has been converted into farmlands and other settlements in just 3 decades.
• Sea-level rise: This is another challenge to these mangroves- especially on the Bay of Bengal coast.

What lies ahead?

• A contract-based one-time plantation under MGNREGS and CAMPA alone may not work unless the local communities take ownership of the forests.
• Discharge of untreated domestic and industrial effluents into the rivers should be immediately stopped.
• The natural inter-tidal flow along the coast should be conserved.

Try this PYQ:

Q. Which one of the following is the correct sequence of ecosystems in the order of decreasing productivity?

(a) Oceans, lakes, grasslands, mangroves

(b) Mangroves, oceans, grasslands, lakes

(c) Mangroves, grasslands, lakes, oceans

(d) Oceans, mangroves, lakes, grasslands

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