New Scientist 18 Feb 09;
THE world's largest surviving mangrove ecosystem - home to the endangered royal Bengal tiger - faces a new threat: petrochemicals.
On 3 February, the state government of West Bengal along with an Indian government committee approved plans for a petrochemicals hub on the island of Nayachar. A final national decision about the plant, which will refine crude oil and produce petroleum by-products, is expected within weeks.
Environmental groups in India are gearing up for the worst. The island is barely 10 kilometres from the Sunderbans, a biodiversity hotspot containing a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
"Setting up a petrochemical cluster in that region is tantamount to ecocide," says Santanu Chacraverti of the Society for Direct Initiative for Social and Health Action, a Kolkata-based NGO. "Noxious effluents will flow into the coastal waters and spread into the vast network of rivers and creeks. Sunderban, the nursery of a range of marine, coastal, and estuarine lifeforms, will be subjected to pollution," he adds.
India has a history of industrialising with little regard for the environment. The most notable example in recent times has been the building of over 3000 dams across the Narmada river, which devastated the river's ecosystem and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
