*East Kolkata Wetlands | Dossier

Kolkata, India
East Kolkata Wetlands Management Authority

Using slow-acting, ecological processes, and traditional aquacultural and agricultural techniques, the century-old East Kolkata Wetlands treat sewage via a series of tiered, planted, aquatic environments. This project combines natural systems and traditional technologies to not only progressively and sustainably cleanse the growing city’s waste but also produce food, fertilizer, and livelihoods for thousands of residents. This adaptive system allows for capacity growth due to increased weather events and ice melt, and reduces carbon expenditure with limited methane release by using flora and fauna instead of energy-intensive filtration and remediation. The project contributes to an overall healthier watershed with cleaner water and increased biodiversity while it sinks carbon through planting and aquaculture operations (~180 Gg CO2 / year), and reduces nitrogen fixation by limiting the need for chemical fertilizers. The scale of the wetlands also preserves food security and much needed open space in the face of encroaching urbanization, which will exacerbate the effects of climate change on the city, including an increase in impermeable surfaces and heat island effect, as well as increasing greenhouse gas emissions. The wetlands are the only large scale formalized system of wastewater fed aquaculture still operating in the world. While this system is exceptional, it is not simply an exportable model. This system is highly dependent on localized socio-economic contexts and resists a “western model” of evaluation to determine its sustainability. It is a system reliant on poverty due to cheap labor and undesirable conditions and undermined by short term metrics for valuing efficiency and effectiveness.

2006 - ongoing
30888 acres
5 feet above sea level

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