Mangrove Forests of Coastal India  Cite

Drivers and Pressures

Mangrove forests continue to be stressed by various factors. These include habitat conversion for urbanization, aquaculture, agriculture, salt farming and other developmental activities such as tourism, mining, refineries, oil pipeline passages, port/harbor, dam and road constructions, changes in hydrological regimes, increasing salinity, coastal pollution, siltation, over-exploitation of fishery resources, cattle grazing, and private ownership.

Specific stressors are: (i) agriculture and prawn seed collection in the Sundarbans, West Bengal, (ii) prawn farming and encroachment in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, (iii) cattle grazing in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, (iv) industrial developments in Gujarat, (v) cyclone and floods along east coast, (vi) mangrove areas under private lands in Kerala, Maharashtra and Karnataka; and (iv) urbanization in Mumbai (Bhatt et al., 2013).

Coastal erosion as driven by sea level rise is a growing threat. The east coast of India is vulnerable to sea level rise and coastal erosion (Kathiresan, 2017), but the west coast is more or less stable due to large structures of rocky coast. Coastal erosion is the highest in West Bengal followed by Puducherry and Tamil Nadu. The hot spots of coastal erosion are Sagar Island in West Bengal, Kendrapada & Puri districts of Odisha, Diu , Pondicherry, Mumbai city, Alappuzha district of Kerala (Ramesh and Bhatt, 2018).