IAS Gyan

Daily News Analysis

Wetlands of India’ Portal  

4th October, 2021 ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY

                                               

                                                Copyright infringement is not intended

 

Context: Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change launched ‘Wetlands of India’ Portal, a single point access to all information relating to wetlands.

About portal:

  • The portal is a dynamic system for processing information and making it available to the stakeholders in an efficient and accessible manner.
  • The portal also hosts capacity building material, data repository, videos and and information for students.
  • Importantly, a dashboard for each State and UT has been developed to access the portal and populate it with information of wetlands in their administration.
  • It enables citizen engagement.
  • It has been developed under a Technical Cooperation project “Wetlands Management for Biodiversity and Climate Protection” (Wetlands Project) of Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) in partnership with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.
  • The project is commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) under the International Climate Initiative (IKI).

 

What are Wetlands?

  • Wetlands are areas where water covers the soil, or is present either at or near the surface of the soil all year or for varying periods of time during the year, including during the growing season.
  • Water saturation (hydrology) largely determines how the soil develops and the types of plant and animal communities living in and on the soil. Wetlands may support both aquatic and terrestrial species.

 

Categories of wetlands

Two general categories of wetlands are recognized: coastal or tidal wetlands and inland or non-tidal wetlands.

 

Functions of wetland:

                                 

https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1760293