KOLKATA, India: Wetlands just outside India's Kolkata have for generations provided tonnes of food daily and thousands of jobs as they filter sewage through fish ponds — but rapid urbanization is threatening the ecosystem.
Conservationists warn that pollution and strong-arm land grabs are putting a lifeline for the megacity's 14 million residents at risk.'We are destroying the environment,' said Tapan Kumar Mondal, who has spent his life farming fish in the ingenious system of canals and ponds stretching across about 125 square kilometers .'The population... has increased, there is a pressure on nature, they are ruining it,' 71-year-old Mondal added.
'The wetlands system processes about 60 percent of Kolkata's sewage free of charge, saving the city over $64 million a year, according to a 2017 University of Calcutta study.Farms in the wetlands provide about 150 tonnes of vegetables daily, 10,500 tonnes of fish annually and employ tens of thousands of people, the Ramsar listing estimates.
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