Health of Urban Lakes in India

Urban lakes and other waterscapes are analogous to living humans, flora, fauna and even cities. The ‘Eyes of the Earth’, as they are referred to, urban lakes, large or small, are determinants of the health of a city and its citizens. The systematic disappearance of the lakes over the decades and the deteriorating conditions of the remaining lakes in India are directly affecting the health of the cities as reflected by the rising water distresses in the form of floods and droughts; and the wellbeing of the citizens as reflected by the rising asymmetric access to water services and water borne diseases. The ecosystem health of urban lakes (and other waterscapes and naturescapes) needs better diagnoses to understand the patterns before any further interventions are made towards sustainable cities. This is because, in the National Smart Cities Mission of India, the lake (and not its conservation) is ironically a meagre piece of infrastructure rather than a natural ecosystem, and is considered for ‘development’ for mere economic reasons: recreation and for real estate.

Several interesting social and ecological patterns exist in the processes and problems of urban lakes. A Socio-Ecological System (SES) approach, developed by the Late Prof. Elinor Ostrom and the scholars of The Ostroms Workshop of Indiana University, Bloomington, is used to provide a systematic way to diagnose the patterns and better understand the health of urban lakes in India. The SES ontology, emerging as an integrated toolbox for comprehensive understanding, comprises of interlinked attributes of the key components namely, resource (lake) physical, resource services/values, governing mechanisms and organisations and users embedded in a social-economic-political context where other related sub-systems co-exist. The urban lake is a socio-ecological system with characteristics of natural as well as socially engineered systems, which makes the inputs of governance complex and the expected outcome of sustainability uncertain. Some SES patterns of urban lakes are shared as useful tips for architects, planners, designers and managers who engage with them.

The tratidional ponds, that are rainwater harvesting structures in the villages, are now urban lakes in the cities and are also wastewater recipients. The lake governance today is driven by the provision of physical and social infrastructure functions like a reservoir for rain and wastewater collection besides continuing the older function of public open space for citizens’ wellbeing. With wastewater inflows and the new restoration techniques, urban lakes have transformed into ecosystems that are different from the known wetlands and natural lakes in the hinterlands and villages. While there are divided views about urban lakes being wastewater recipients, there is a consensus that wastewater is a potential source of water to compensate the regular water losses from evaporation and percolation thus ensuring year-round water besides addressing the wastewater problems of the city. This is changing the perennial nature of the lakes leading to a wastewater revolution in infrastructure management, a judicious wastewater treatment for the health of the lake ecosystem as well as for those living in the lake surroundings. Urban lakes thus have a new classification of being a ‘constructed wetland’, ‘artificial wetland’ and ‘wastewater wetland’. Managing urban lakes towards sustainability requires governance approaches that are different from those used for managing wetlands, lakes, ponds and river systems.

In the current developments, urban lakes are perceived as infrastructure rather than as engineered natural ecosystems

A land-water nexus is at the helm of the political ecology and economy of the urban lakes. A lake without water is a land parcel that is valued higher for urban development than a waterbody thus posing a big incentive to fill up the lake causing threats to the lake ecosystem including extinction. Though unintentional, much of the solid waste generated in the city found a place in urban lakes for decades in the absence of proper solid waste management plans. The lack of proper monitoring of the lakes continues to make them potential solid waste dumping sites, which pollute the lakes. A lake thus catches disease during its transformation into a landfill site and further reaches death with the transformation into a land parcel suitable for urban development. Nearly half the urban lakes in the country have been used for all kinds of building needs in the last few decades.

The disappearance and transformation of urban lakes are attributed to the land-use approach of city planning that excludes the water-use development and management. Since water and land use are competing in the city and since land is viewed to have a definite financial value for individuals it continues winning over the water that has an equally higher but collective value. It is important that the short-term as well as long-term ecosystem services of urban lakes are somehow monetised to compare with the net present value of land, particularly highlighting the costs and benefits of wellbeing with water availability. The need for preparing watershed management plans at neighbourhood, city, as well as regional levels is long overdue; plans that physically integrate management of rainwater, wastewater and groundwater with all forms of land development. Since urban lakes are spatially distributed in the cityscape, they will remain key to prevention and mitigation of the rising droughts and floods due to Climate Change. In addition, the integrated use of rain, waste and ground water is crucial towards sustainable cities. Local rainwater harvesting, reduction of ground water extraction and treatment of wastewater needs incentivising for citizens to engage in the city’s development.

The preferred value of urban lakes drives lake development. The current direct and indirect use values of urban lakes geared towards ‘wise use’ translates into leisure and livelihood initiatives. Besides, they are potential public open spaces amidst the high-density buildings that are short of substantial green and open spaces. Developing and conserving urban lakes will provide the necessary quantity and quality of ecosystem services required for a healthy neighbourhood and city. Though lake development and conservation are meant to complement each other, the dilemma of preferred values poses a conflict. Since most lake approaches are driven by development for leisure and livelihood, the conservation of the lake ecology, though crucial for sustainability to achieve even the former, often gets compromised.

Urban lakes are complex socio-ecological systems affecting the health of the city and its citizens

Conflict between development and conservation is here to stay since the value perspective is anthropocentric. So, compared to the target for meeting human needs/greeds, the targets for preserving the life support systems are contested and curbed. For example, standards exist for addressing toxic air pollutants that threaten human health, but there are weak with no mandates for ecosystem health for nature to exist in a natural state in the lake development. Targets for breeding of endangered migratory birds and fish stocks, besides other aquatic-waterside flora and fauna, can be part of the mandate. Since we are far from saving a lake for the life of the lake, keeping people away from the lake is not an option; instead, lake development in the guise of conservation with minimal human interference for ecosystem rejuvenation could be an ideal option. It is high time to realise that the thresholds of water-land resources and ecosystems for sustainable cities are severely challenged in the urban development process.

The polycentric governing environment of urban lakes encompasses multi-level organisations from the constitutional to the operational levels along with a plethora of governing mechanisms like the policies, rules, strategies, guidelines, incentives and sanctions. Importantly, there is now an acknowledgement that urban lakes are ‘different’ from wetlands and natural lakes and require a specific framework of understanding. A nationwide designation and delineation of the urban lakes is followed by the ongoing census documentation and lake developments. Several urban lakes are undergoing restoration through these policies and programmes and hence it is important that the health of the urban lakes undergo proper diagnoses prior to more wrongful actions.

The new lake development on ground does take into consideration the nationally approved Integrated Lake Basin Management approach (developed and proposed by the International Lake Environment Committee, ILEC, Japan), which encompasses principles like institutions, policies, participation, technology, information, finance for the national objective of lake conservation and management. However, since the lake development on the ground is limited to the lake water spread area rather than on the watershed area, it has resulted in over concretisation of the lake shores and ignored the ecosystem approach to the lakebed and the watershed. Hence it is vital that the national level water organisations and those working at the state level work in conjunction for land-use planning and infrastructure building/construction.

In addition, the vertical and horizontal interactive water governance needs to be looked into on an urgent basis to organise and integrate the data and learning produced in the process where the SES approach is useful for developing the knowledge bank for future monitoring, evaluation, meta-analyses over space and time. This may further be effective and efficient only when the lake governance includes community empowerment and engagement with the government facilitating the process.

In a polycentric governing environment, on the one hand, several organisations from different levels with overlapping and conflicting prerogatives (of rights, duties, mechanisms and instruments) are collectively acting towards restoring the lakes through the integrated lake basin management approach. On the other hand, the organisations are struggling first to maintain the collective agreements and second to maintain the lakes collectively. Since the collective action is driven by rational-bound economic thinking, it is often a reaction to the events and disturbances occurring in the urban system such as floods, droughts, diseases and access issues. The collective action ends up as a mere mechanism initiated through coercion like incentives of finding public-private-people partnerships. Besides, what is decided collectively is not necessarily in alignment with what is the best alternative; rather it is the current best ‘fit’ alternative available to those in the decision-action situation. The reasons that characterise the collective action problems are generic and the same that characterise successful collective actions such as communication, conflict resolution, compliance to rules, commitment to agreement, sharing resources, information sharing and willingness to change.

Amidst the collective action challenges, the lake governance succeeded in resolving the property right and development right issues of the urban lakes by delegating the urban lake activities to the local urban development organisations; amending the remote administration of the state/national level organisations in the past, which was considered key to poor maintenance of the lakes. The lake development process has been expedited with the local development organisation taking charge, but there is no relief for the lake from concretisation and thus the state of the lake remains unimproved and the water distresses continue to rise. A silver lining here is that there is more room for innovative experiments on ecosystem rejuvenation only when those involved are informed and inclined towards them. Ironically, the absence of integrated education on land, water and ecosystem in urban studies like architecture, urban planning, landscape design, urban management results in experiments on urban lakes merely as land ‘developments’ with or without water, which increases the lake governance and sustainability challenges.

The absence of integrated education on water matters adds to the diminishing awareness and participation of the urban community in lake governance, more so in the absence of dependence on the lake functions with urban occupation and available alternate water sources. To expect the traditional (homogenous) community water management of the past to work on the large (heterogeneous) urban community is naive. Bringing urbanites together on a platform to discuss local issues like lakes is challenging despite the presence of mass/social media, which have been influential in the macro-level social-political movements. The community attention is diverted from governing activities since the urbanisation process, with a common perception of the government and the community that the former is the provider and the latter is the user of the goods and services drawn from most resources like the lakes.

Part of the poor lake governance is attributed to poor/no community involvement. In such conditions, the community-based organisations are crucial connectors between the government and the community. For example, as critical questioners seeking accountability from the government on behalf of the community and conducting awareness among the community on behalf of the government. The private business organisations are also interested in lake developments through corporate social responsibility or otherwise as economic ventures through recreational and real estate developments in and around the lakes.

Sustainability of the lakes along with sustainable governance is indeed an ideal (pareto optimal) situation. The challenge though is the presumption that sustainability of the one (governance) will lead to sustainability of the other (lake). This is true of many cases but cannot be generalised into a theory; instead, there are different scenarios of this causal relationship that are time and place specific, which can be used to build models for adaptive learning. For lake sustainability, the objectives of lake governance vary from lake to lake as well as over time because of the diverse demands/values that are also changing. The governance objectives range from efforts to preserving the pristine conditions all the way to the de facto acceptance of the complete ecosystem deformation and deterioration. Between these, the objectives are usually to minimise the problems and maximise the values derived.

Lake development in the guise of conservation with minimal human interference for ecosystem rejuvenation could be an ideal option

The realistic objective usually is to reconcile the diverse objectives inherent in a lake and the surrounding urban developments. Aiming for full ecological sustainability is tricky as urban lakes have reduced biodiversity value since being transformed into socially engineered systems. Aiming for a transition to sustainability is a more realistic objective to achieve, which has further advanced to robustness and resilience as they emphasise the adaptive capacity in addition to the linking of the social and ecological systems. So instead of asking how to sustain urban lakes, the question now asked is, ‘What will make urban lake systems robust and resilient?’ At the core, a basic concern that prevails in the minds of the lake doers is: Here is a lake that is vital to the urban ecosystem but is in poor condition, what must I do? There exist various ways to improve the condition like technical, social, economic, ecological, etc. that are all necessary. There is no competition as to what the best way is, rather there is a need to take them together to make the best ‘fit’!

The science of urban lakes in India is driven by solution-seeking exercises because of the policy and value demands. The solutions divided by disciplines and sector-based approaches result in incomplete solutions to the incompletely understood problems. There is a need to acknowledge that urban lakes are complex problems, so rather than seeking simple linear solutions, it is important to learn to harness complexity. Thus, understanding the complex system problems before aiming to reduce and manage them. Complex system management needs advancing towards integrated approach in the physical as well as disciplinary sense. Physical integration at the core requires sector integration of water, land, urban, biodiversity, participation and more. Disciplinary integration requires multi-trans-disciplinary studies such as the socio-ecological system approach.

We need to build know-how for complex system management through building partnership among practice and academia using applied research. Open-ended and basic understanding research that is not driven by ideas of solution and application are necessary as they have the capability to yield unexpected benefits that are necessary for innovative thinking. That will also help change the mindset to the absence of a panacea rather than looking for solutions to solve the complex and atypical problems of urban lakes. It will allow learning from cases that were successful as well as those that failed. At the same time, adapting the learning at a different spatial-temporal context will avert the risk of seeking linear solutions.

Urban Lakes have come a long way in the last two decades in India. They are identified as crucial and complex socio-ecological systems affecting the health of the city and its citizens, thus seeking attention for novel governance approach towards transition to sustainability. If Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG11 Goal) are aiming to achieve Clean Water and Sanitation for all (SDG06 Goal) besides taking Climate Actions (SDG13 Goal), understanding the role, and addressing the health of urban lakes shall remain a continuum for now.

Urban Lake studies is a new field in the Sustainability Science that has the potential to build its own pedagogy through the necessary ontological and epistemological studies, which is already happening through a wide network of the commons and the lake scholars from various disciplines, sectors and regions spearheaded by frameworks like the socio-ecological system. The field certainly offers livelihood opportunities now in India unlike two decades ago when I started as a lake enthusiast-researcher with very few takers willing to ‘Walk the Lake, Talk the Lake’ (see my previous article on this in the MyLiveableCity (Jan-Jun 2020) edition.