The India Rivers Forum is a vibrant and active network of organisations and individuals that are committed to the conservation and safeguarding of our rivers against needless and detrimental development. Every year, India Rivers Forum organises the India Rivers Week to raise awareness regarding these issues. This year, India Rivers Week, organised in Pune, brought together more than 100 practitioners, including representatives from academia and civil society movements, to discuss riverfront development unfolding in different parts of the country.
Riverfront development has been promoted in a big way by the central and state governments across the country in the name of rejuvenating and beautifying the rivers. Some of the prominent sites for riverfront development projects across India are Varanasi, Bhagalpur, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Hyderabad, Jammu, Kota, Bilaspur, Patna, Guwahati, and Pune.
<p>Though riverfront development aims to revitalise the riverfront areas, in reality, these projects are less about river restoration and more about the encroachment of floodplains and riverbeds characterised by heavily concretised embankments and other structures like barrages, as well as reclaiming floodplains and riverbeds for real estate development.</p>
The Pune riverfront development project follows the same trajectory. As part of the programme, the participants visited a few sites in the Mula-Mutha system where riverfront development has been taken up and saw for themselves what is being developed under the name of river rejuvenation.
The river, with its banks, meanders, and riparian zones, performs various ecological and geophysical functions and provides social and economic services. It provides diverse habitat for numerous aquatic, semi-aquatic, and terrestrial flora and fauna. Converting it into a concrete channel with a homogenous depth is against the very spirit of ecological integrity and restoration. It is well known from global scientific knowledge and experience that a river can only retain its ecological functions and services when its natural and heterogenous habitats are maintained and supported.
<p>This public statement, which has been unanimously agreed upon by the participants of India River Week 2023, brings out the fact that riverfront development in its present form will raise flood levels steeply, destroy the ecological integrity of the rivers, and jeopardize the communities whose lives and livelihoods are dependent on rivers. It calls for an immediate halt of the ongoing works and activities under the project and constitutes a multi-disciplinary independent expert group (including representation from civil society organisations) to study all aspects of the project in a participatory and consultative manner and come up with an alternative design that is ecologically and socially just.</p>
We have serious concerns regarding claims made by the project, as stated below:
<p>The current Pune riverfront development project lacks a holistic approach that takes into account the long-term effects of development on the riverine ecology. We are for genuine rejuvenation of the rivers, but not the present project or the manner in which it is being implemented presently. The Pune group working on the Mula-Mutha rivers has shown that an alternative, nature-based way for the rejuvenation of the rivers is possible. We sincerely urge the Pune Municipal Corporation to seriously consider this alternative approach.</p>
Statement adopted unanimously by the participants of India Rivers Week 2023 on behalf of India Rivers Forum
K. J. Joy (9766247320), Shripad Dharmadhikary (9552526472), Siddharth Agarwal (8100170707), Neha Bhadbhade (9158735383)