Essay on disappearing mangroves around Mumbai
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"At a time when we require more and more mangroves, we are destroying, unfortunately, more and more mangroves," Kumar says.
Studies show that Mumbai lost nearly 40 percent of its mangroves between 1991 and 2001 — about 9,000 acres. And rapid urbanization continues to threaten them.
A short car ride from the dried mangroves along the highway, a municipal garbage truck dumps trash on the edge of a mangrove patch. Sludge and plastic waste cover the roots of the mangroves, slowly choking them. In another area nearby, hundreds of acres of mangroves are being cut for the construction of the Navi Mumbai international airport.
Bare trees with slender branches line a half-built highway overpass in eastern Mumbai. These are mangroves, trees or shrubs found in tropical swampy marshland with roots that grow above the ground. But construction has blocked their lifeblood — salt water. Their aerial roots poke through dry, caked mud instead of brackish water.
Environmentalist B.N. Kumar points to a small channel under the highway where seawater once entered the mangrove patch. It's now littered with rocks and construction debris.
"All the mangroves, about 5,000 of them, have dried up. They can only be used as firewood now," Kumar says. "It's very sad to see
Thousands of acres of velvety green mangroves line the border between the Arabian sea and the city of Mumbai in western India. They act as natural buffers against coastal erosion and flooding, and they store up to four times as much carbon as other forests. With sea level rise inevitable, Mumbai's mangroves are more important now than ever. A new report by climate change researchers predicts much of Mumbai, which is India's financial capital, will be underwater by 2050 if global carbon emissions aren't reduced. The city, originally a cluster of seven islands, is especially vulnerable. Many parts of it have been built by reclaiming land