National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) has completed the documentation and Ground-truthing of Maharashtra’s 23,415 wetlands, paving the way to formally notify and bring the water bodies under legal protection under the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules.

According to the Maharashtra wetlands dashboard maintained by the NCSCM data, Chattrapati Sambhaji Nagar and Nagpur division has the highest wetlands in Maharashtra, with 5,196 and 5,086 wetlands respectively. 

The Ahmednagar district has the highest number of wetlands in the State at 1,596, followed by Nashik with 1,236 and Chandrapur which has 1,231. The wetlands documented also includes 247 in Thane, 1,093 in Raigad, 37 in Mumbai city and 210 in Mumbai suburban districts.

Maharashtra government tasked NCSCM, functioning under the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) to do satellite mapping, documentation and field verification of wetlands identified under the National Wetlands Inventory and Assessment launched by the Centre nearly two decades ago.

Ground-truthing for 11 wetlands located in Pune among the 2,3415 is remaining. Ground-truthing means the process of physical verification of wetlands on site to confirm their existence, boundaries, ecological condition and present land use against satellite imagery — a crucial step before wetlands can be officially notified under environmental protection laws.

The wetlands play role in flood buffering, groundwater recharge, carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation. They also act as natural sponges during extreme rainfall events — a role that has become increasingly important amid changing climate patterns and recurring urban floods.

The MoEFCC launched the decadal-change version of the National Wetland Atlas in 2020 to track changes in wetlands over time, but Maharashtra’s ground-truthing exercise continued to lag for years thereafter. The Maharashtra exercise gathered momentum following legal interventions by Vanashakti and subsequent Supreme Court directions asking States and Union Territories to complete wetland demarcation and verification in a time-bound manner.

According to the Environmental groups, it is a critical step as this will prevent wetlands, which are not officially notified from becoming a dumping yard. The un-notified wetlands are treated as reclamation, debris dumping, encroachments and destruction in the name of infrastructure development.

“This process should not have taken 16 years after the National Wetland Atlas was launched,” said B.N. Kumar, director of NatConnect Foundation. He also pointed out that the prolonged delay has already caused considerable damage to Maharashtra’s wetland ecosystem, particularly in biodiversity-rich areas of Uran and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. 

“The burial of wetlands in Uran has already triggered unseasonal flooding and compensation payouts worth crores from taxpayers’ money. This could have been avoided had the authorities acted in time to preserve these natural drainage systems,“ said Nandakumar Pawar, director of Sagarshakti.