Pestilential or Productive? Tracking Two Centuries of Environmental Change and Current Perceptions About Ecosystem Services of the East Kolkata Wetlands

Nature-based solutions (NbS) have gained popularity for their capacity to address sustainability chllenges in multiple ways. A historically grounded understanding of NbS framing in older urban areas, coupled with an examination of their resilience in contemporary times, can be very useful, especially in the global South, in the context of its urbanisation. The east Kolkata wetlands are a unique urban ecosystem for waste management and food provisioning in peri-urban Kolkata, one of India’s largest metropolitan cities. Using archival data, dating back to colonial times (mid-eighteenth century), secondary data on land use changes and in-depth interviews, we map the changes in perception and use of this wetland. By studying how food production and waste management supported by the wetland are in danger of being compromised, our research highlights why it is critical to acknowledge the multiple services of urban wetlands that are often undervalued by policymakers. We argue that if these services historically provided by the wetland are viewed as emerging NbS, they can contribute to enhancing ecosystem services, provide a better understanding of trade-offs between ecosystem services and disservices and help address sustainability challenges in today’s urban planning

Pestilential or Productive? Tracking Two Centuries of Environmental Change and Current Perceptions About Ecosystem Services of the East Kolkata Wetlands

Nature-based solutions (NbS) have gained popularity for their capacity to address sustainability chllenges in multiple ways. A historically grounded understanding of NbS framing in older urban areas, coupled with an examination of their resilience in contemporary times, can be very useful, especially in the global South, in the context of its urbanisation. The east Kolkata wet-lands are a unique urban ecosystem for waste management and food provisioning in peri-urban Kolkata, one of India’s largest metropolitan cities. Using archival data, dating back to colonial times (mid-eighteenth century), secondary data on land use changes and in-depth interviews, we map the changes in perception and use of this wetland. By studying how food production and waste management supported by the wetland are in danger of being compromised, our research high- lights why it is critical to acknowledge the multiple services of urban wetlands that are often under- valued by policymakers. We argue that if these services historically provided by the wetland are viewed as emerging NbS, they can contribute to enhancing ecosystem services, provide a better understanding of trade-offs between ecosystem services and disservices and help address sustain-ability challenges in today’s urban planning

A new imagination for waste and water in India’s peri-urban interface

Cities are often seen as incubators for enterprise and innovation. However, in this urbanization era, we seem to suffer from a lack of imagination on how to handle the many environmental problems associated with expanding cities. This is especially true in the case of the peri-urban interface (PUI), a geographical and conceptual landscape with which the city core often has a contentious relationship. In this chapter, we look at the complex linkages between water and waste in the PUIs of two metropolitan cities: Bengaluru and Kolkata. We look at two water systems: Kannuru lake in Bengaluru and Kolkata’s wetlands. Kannuru is a freshwater lake that supported traditional livelihoods and subsistence use by local communities, while Kolkata’s peri-urban wetlands not only served as the city’s natural sewage treatment plant but also enabled agriculture and aquaculture. Urbanization has adversely impacted both these water systems. Kannuru lake is threatened by a landfill on its periphery, while sewage-based farming and fisheries in Kolkata’s wetlands have been impacted by changes in land use and composition of sewage. We unravel the complexity in the waste-water relationship, where waste is seen as a pollutant in one and as a nutrient in the other. We attempt to understand how we can re-envision waste and water linkages in the PUIs of expanding cities if India needs to move towards a sustainable future