Revitalization of Rivers in India Draft Policy - Isha Guru Jaggi Vasudev

Revitalization of Rivers In India
Draft Policy Recommendation
LAND USE PATTERNS
ON RIVERSIDES
Data and maps of land use along the entire length of the rivers of
India are to be made available. To implement any solution on a piece of
landmass, it will be essential to know who owns the land. Broadly the land
can be classified as public land, or land owned by a private individual – a
farmer, or an industry. The percentage of riverside land owned by private
farmers is expected to be 60%-75% in the state of Madhya Pradesh. 2 It
will be safe to assume that in most states, except the Himalayan states
(like Uttarakhand where most of the land of the state is reserve forest,
including riverside lands), riverside land held by the governments will be
around 25 to 40%.
Therefore, the solution of afforestation should have two different
approaches – one for public land (river banks and forest land) and
another for the farm land. While the solution proposed for the public
land will have the forest as the primary stakeholder, the farm lands will
have farmers and their livelihood as the priority. So in the case of public
land, raising dense forests with native and endemic trees and shrubs
is suggested as the solution and for farm lands, agro-forestry based
livelihood is suggested.
Ideally the solution suggested will work best when implemented on
the entire length on either side of the river continuously from the origin
of the river until it meets the sea (or another river). But the solution
proposed here and the means to implement it are novel. Therefore a
target of 1 km on either sides of river on a continuous stretch of 100 km
or more is suggested. Although the 1 km-width suggested in the solution
is scientifically valid, 3 for tributaries and smaller streams this width
could be correspondingly smaller (e.g. 500 m or less). The one-kilometer
corridor recommendation is also supported by the widely held view
amongst forest experts that even one square kilometer of forest is enough
to generate rainfall by harvesting passing clouds given the Ekman spiral
phenomenon (see Chapter 2).
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