The World Wildlife Fund has urged the mayor to drop plans to concretise the embankments of waterbodies like the Dhakuria Lakes (above) to maintain bio-diversity

The Calcutta Municipal Corporation’s (CMC) Rs 4.9-crore waterbody beautification scheme has suffered a setback with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) urging mayor Subrata Mukherjee to drop its decision to shore the embankments with concrete.

The proposed embankment plan covers 11 waterbodies of the city, including the Dhakuria Lakes, and is part of the Calcutta environmental improvement project funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

After being petitioned by several NGOs, the international wildlife preservation agency knocked at mayor Mukherjee’s door to restrain him from destroying the ecology of the ponds and their adjacent areas by cementing their embankments.

Noted ecologists and teachers at Calcutta and Kalyani universities, including S.C. Santra and Amalesh Chowdhury, have expressed concern over the CMC’s decision, too.

In a letter to the mayor, working president of Friends of Wetlands and Wildlife Gitanath Ganguly has expressed serious concern over the proposed concretisation of the embankments of a waterbody between Golf Green and Bijoygarh, in Arakpur mouza, under ward 95 of the CMC.

The WWF state office and nature-loving NGOs think concretising the embankments will severely tilt the ecological balance in and around the waterbodies. As an alternative, NGOs like Friends of Wetlands and Wildlife and Vasundhara Foundation propose to seek help from international funding agencies and retain the ecological balance by shoring the embankments with eco-friendly materials, like bamboo and wood.

The NGOs pointed out that there was no mention of cementing the banks in the ADB’s project report (ADB TA No. 3089), either. Instead, the report has advised bamboo-piling and cut-drum sheet-walling filled with earth as an immediate measure to arrest further damage to the embankments.

The ADB report also mentioned the state forest department as a suitable agency for the job, the NGOs said.

Mayoral council member (parks and gardens) Hridayanand Gupta said: “I admit concretising the banks of waterbodies does immense and irreversible harm to the aquatic ecology. But we cannot follow an eco-friendly prescription for constructing the embankments around swimming pools. However, for other waterbodies, the suggestions can be given effect to on an experimental basis.”

The NGOs pointed out that the bio-diversity of many ponds in Calcutta and its suburbs, including the Dhakuria Lakes, has been completely destroyed due to such embankments.

There are still quite a few ponds in and around the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, Golf Green, Jadavpur, Dhakuria, Bijoygarh, Santoshpur, Behala and the Panchashayar areas which have been playing a major role in maintaining the micro-level ecological balance.

According to ecologists, the divisional zone where the land meets water is the most important, as it supports the largest bio-diversity.

Shoring it up with concrete will severely upset the green balance and push a wide variety of flora and fauna to extinction, they explained.