Sea water as a social resource

The year 2010 marks the 80th anniversary of the Salt Satyagraha launched at Dandi by Mahatma Gandhi and at Vedaranyam by Rajaji to establish that sea water is a social resource. A Sea Water Farming project and a Genetic Garden of Halophytes are being launched at Vedaranyam on December 26, 2010 to initiate a new era in strengthening the livelihoods of coastal fisher and farming communities.

Sea water constitutes over 96 per cent of the global water resource, while ground water's share is only 1.7 per cent. Currently, we are overexploiting ground water leading to the rapid depletion of the aquifer, while we hardly make use of the water of the oceans and seas for agriculture which consumes nearly 80 per cent of the available fresh water. It is in this context that Mahatma Gandhi's salt satyagraha launched in Dandi, Gujarat, 80 years ago assumes wider significance. The Dandi March was designed to protest against the salt tax imposed by the then colonial Government, thereby emphasising that sea water and the salt manufactured from it are the property of the people and not of the Government.

Gandhiji's historic Dandi March to break the Salt Law started on March 12, 1930. C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) planned a march from Tiruchi to Vedaranyam for a similar purpose. On April 13, 1930, Rajaji started from Tiruchi and he was joined by large numbers of people at Thanjavur, Kumbakonam and other places. Sardar Vedaratnam Pillai was also an important leader and there is a memorial in his honour at Vedaranyam. Sixteen days later, Rajaji and his followers picked up a handful of salt and were immediately arrested and sentenced to six months imprisonment. Early this year, the Dandi march was commemorated through a programme for the conservation of the coastal ecosystem initiated by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) under the leadership of Mr. Gopalkrishna Gandhi.

Programme launch, aim

On December 26, 2010, which marks the sixth anniversary of the tsunami which caused severe damage in Tamil Nadu and other States, a Salt Satyagraha Memorial Programme is being launched at Vedaranyam by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) with support from the Society of Integrated Coastal Management of the MoEF, the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India and the Government of Tamil Nadu. Its major aim is to harness sea water for raising agri-aqua farms and bioshields along the coast. The crops chosen obviously have to be tolerant to saline water. These salt-tolerant plants, or halophytes, constitute two per cent of terrestrial plant species. Halophytes have been tested in several laboratories as vegetables, oilseed crops and fodder plants. Experiments have been carried out in the U.S., Mexico and India with Salicornia brachiata, also known as sea asparagus, to assess its usefulness as a protein feed for livestock and as a source of oil. Salicornia is also being regarded as a good feedstock for biodiesel production.

Among other species chosen for economic exploitation are Atriplex and Sesuvium portulacastrum. Sesuvium has been cultivated in Italy and in the Middle East with sea water. In India, research has been carried out at the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research's (CSIR) Central Salt and Marine Chemical Research Institute, Bhavnagar, and at Annamalai and several other universities. The crops chosen for sea water farming should be economically attractive, in order to offset the cost of pumping sea water. Also, the agronomic techniques used should belong to the ever-green agriculture category, i.e. higher productivity in perpetuity without associated ecological harm. The aquaculture techniques chosen should involve Low External Input Sustainable Aquaculture (LEISA) technology.

The components

Dr. V. Selvam and his colleagues of MSSRF have standardised techniques for raising halophytes and for rearing fish in experiments conducted on a participatory research mode in farmers' fields near Chidambaram. The sea water farming project will have the following components:

•Cultivation of Salicornia for production of oil seed and biosalt using seawater for irrigation.

•Seawater-based agri-aqua farming system involving cultivation of halophytes, mangroves and culture of fish

•Restoration of degraded mangrove ecosystems and raising new mangrove forests

•Development of the Vedaranyam area on the biovillage model, with concurrent attention to ecological rehabilitation and generation of new on-farm and non-farm sources of income through market-driven micro-enterprises.

They will be initially implemented with the participation of the fishing community of Seeruthalaikadu village in Vedaranyam taluk in Nagapattinam district, as a self-replicating model so that sea water farming becomes a movement in coastal areas. Exposure visits, orientation workshops and technical training will be organised. The demonstrations will be taken up in mudflats, where no other plants are growing now due to hypersaline condition. Baseline data on geological, geophysical and hydro-geological characters are being collected and these parameters monitored regularly to assess how halophytes play a role in reducing soil and ground water salinity in the mudflat. Anna University has already prepared a detailed land use and land cover map of the area.

The project will involve the regeneration of degraded mangrove forests and raising new mangrove plantations. It was observed during the tsunami that mangrove forests serve as bioshields and speed-breakers. Thus, coastal afforestation will help managing the impact of sea level rise and contribute to carbon sequestration. Through a Joint Mangrove Management system, MSSRF has restored about 1,500 ha of degraded mangroves in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal in partnership with State Forest Departments and local fishing communities. After the tsunami, mangrove bioshields were established in about 280 ha in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Both the restored mangroves and mangrove bioshield are managed by multi-stakeholder based rural institutions.

The per capita availability of freshwater has gone down from 5,000 cubic metres in 1981 to 1.700 cubic metre now. This led the Supreme Court of India to direct the Government of India to constitute a Committee of Experts, under the Chairmanship of Dr. T. Ramasami, Secretary, DST, to standardise solutions for the problem of water scarcity.

Three groups

The DST has classified the technological approaches for solving these problems into three groups. First, Winning water from sustainable resources, second, Augmentation of quality of water from available and accessible sources, and third, Renovation and Recycling. A Technology Mission on Winning, Augmentation and Renovation (WAR) for Water was launched by the DST in August 2009. The Vedaranyam Sea Water Farming project is designed to help in augmenting water availability for agriculture. Through halophytes, sea water can become a substitute for freshwater in raising crops in the coastal areas, where over 20 percent of our population lives.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has projected that an additional 200 million hectares of new cropland will be needed to feed the population of nearly eight billion over the next 30 years. Some calculations show that only 93 million hectares of additional land may be available for crop cultivation. This too will be at the expense of forest land. On the other hand, we have large areas of arid and semi-arid land along the sea coast. With sea water farming we can extend the area of cultivation by growing not only halophytes but also relatively salt-tolerant plants like coconut, date palm and cashewnut. Mangrove and non-mangrove bioshields will help meet the challenge of sea level rise. The MoEF has calculated that we may have to be prepared for a one metre rise in the mean sea level by the end of this century. The Vedaranyam project can thus strengthen the livelihood security of coastal communities, and help tackle the challenge of sea level rise.

Genetic garden

In the Genetic Garden of Halophytes, there may be over 1,600 species belonging to 550 genera and 117 families. The garden will initially comprise halophytes occurring along the coasts of India including the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Mahatma Gandhi's emphasis on the social ownership status of sea water should be converted into scientifically designed sea water farming practices to strengthen water security for agriculture. For domestic needs more expensive methods of solar desalination, and reverse osmosis can be adopted. But for agriculture, it will be best to use this vast resource for livelihood benefits through halophytes on the one hand and through marine fish species on the other. The 80th anniversaries of the Dandi and Vedaranyam marches can then mark the beginning of a new era in the livelihood security of coastal fisher and farm families.