Vembanad Lake and the canals that connect it to the sea, with their marshes and mangrove forests, form the famed backwaters of Kerala — a site of such surpassing beauty that many people pay up to Rs 25,000 a day to enjoy it from houseboats of lake-front resorts. Most feel the experience is well worth the cost. They say they came in search of a serene holiday and found it, in slow afternoons to the music of splashing water and birdcalls, fading into calm and moonlit nights.
This rich wetland habitat, the largest on the southwestern coast of India, is known to environmentalists as the Vembanad-Kola wetlands. It is a Ramsar site — an ecosystem identified as being of international importance at the Convention on Wetlands signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971. It teems with birds, fish, turtles and aquatic plants, including many endangered or threatened species. The lake is 96km long, has a surface area of 36,500ha and is fed by six rivers flowing from the Western Ghats. It sprawls over three districts, and tens of thousands make their living here, fishing, farming, and collecting lime shells.
Tourism is also an important source of livelihood in the wetlands and, like the rest, is carried out either destructively or sustainably. About 600 houseboats operate on Vembanad Lake and the surrounding canals. New resorts and homestays are set up on the banks every year, and resort guests often take a canoe out for a few hours during their stay. From the public jetties, visitors hire rowboats by the hour or take day cruises on motorised boats with a lunch stop and a visit to a coir factory. And there are the ferries by which locals and backpackers travel from island to island.
Not many houseboat tourists actually enter the water, so for them the issue of pollution is mainly one of aesthetics. When they flush the toilet, wash their hands with soap, and head to the deck for a karimeen lunch, they may or may not connect the dots. Only when the pollution becomes visible does it diminish their holiday.
Muthu Subramanian from New Jersey, who took a luxury cruise three years ago with his son, Ravi, remembers the backwaters being pristine, marred only occasionally by debris, “more due to natural causes like falling leaves.” On the banks, he says, “there were waste materials, mainly leaves and domestic waste; they appeared to be collection-points.” When they were on the boat, he noticed that “leftovers and waste were properly collected and stored for disposal later.”
His friend, who took a more economical cruise from Alappuzha to Kollam on a motorised boat with 50-60 fellow passengers, also remembers that the route was clean, especially compared to rivers he had seen in other tourist spots.
The good news is that the backwaters remain splendid, for the most part. In early September 2008, Savithri Sastri from Toronto cruised on an air-conditioned luxury houseboat with her sister and brother-in-law. “I thought it looked quite well maintained,” she says. “The only time I saw any trash was when we would pull up to the banks. I’d see water bottles here and there…it was one of the cleanest places I had seen in India.”
Tourists come away with such impressions partly because of the care of some private companies. One luxury that high-end tourist boats offer is freedom from eco-guilt. Each of the six houseboats that CGH Earth operates in its Spice Cruises division, according to the division’s manager John Thomas, is fitted with biotoilets. A 1,000-litre bioseptic tank is attached to the boat in which sewage is treated, and a bacterial powder is added to reduce the volume of waste. Every six months, the tank is emptied into the mainland sewage treatment tank. The group has used such a system for about 10 years. Rainbow Cruises, also in the luxury category, practises a similar system. John Thomas also points out that the boats are fitted with Leyland engines, which are electrically charged on the mainland and can power the boats for eight hours. The engine produces no fumes, even when the air-conditioning is running.
Resorts on the banks also have a potentially heavy impact on the wetlands. The Coconut Lagoon resort at Kumarakom carries out “100 percent recycling” of waste, says General Manager Sam Philip. “We convert all food waste to biogas, and the biogas is used in the staff kitchens for cooking.” The resort harvests and purifies rainwater and many guests, their consciousness raised by waiters, opt for that fresh water in preference to bottled mineral water. Staff periodically volunteer to clean the banks for some distance around the resort, not just to keep things picture perfect for their guests, but to support the company’s overall ethos of sensitivity to the environment.
Still, the ecosystem is under stress. The very presence of a large number of boats has an effect on aquatic life. During the Vembanad Fish Count carried out in May 2008, areas in which there is a high density of houseboats showed high fish mortality and low biodiversity. In Vattakkayal, where houseboats are parked, water quality was very bad.
Whether on a luxury houseboat or a ferry, tourists are not likely to see trash when they are in the middle of the lake, since floating plastic tends towards the banks and many kinds of trash sink to the bottom. But near the busier jetties, and close to Alappuzha and Kottayam towns, the water is visibly dirtier.
Water hyacinth, which may not look like a problem, is an invasive weed. It grows faster in sewage-polluted waters, then slows the flow and sucks oxygen from the underlying layers of water, killing off other plants and fish. Changes in flow also alter the balance of salt and fresh water in the lake, further disturbing its fish and bird life.
Worse than chemical contaminants or physical trash in the lake is biological pollution, according to Dr Latha Bhaskar of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, which maintains a community resource centre in Alappuzha. That assessment is based on water quality tests measuring nine parameters, including the level of E. coli, which is very high.
About 71.5 lakh tourists came to Kerala in 2007, and the backwaters attracted a large share of them. With those numbers, it takes more than a few sensitive hoteliers to keep the wetlands viable and attractive to tourists year after year. The Responsible Tourism Initiative launched in March 2008 at Kumarakom was designed to involve the tourism industry, the Ministry of Tourism, communities and local governments in sharing the spoils and burdens of tourism more fairly and in conserving the Vembanad wetlands.
During the meetings before the initiative was launched, communities and companies agreed that the present mode of tourism development harms the environment, that there are more houseboats than the lake can carry, that businesses are encroaching on common resources, putting up illegal structures and destroying paddy lands, and that plastic and other waste is being dumped in the backwaters. The consensus was that a conservation plan was needed and that everyone should follow good environmental practices. It remains to be seen what practices actually will be enforced. While the talkfests go on, tourists can at least police themselves.
Environmental activists are careful to stress that tourism itself is not bad for the wetlands community. Dr Bhaskar clarifies, “We are not pinpointing or blaming. Our role is to evaluate [the pollution] and alert the industry.”
For sensitive tourists, reducing plastic waste and saving water are a start, as in any fragile ecosystem, but she suggests that tourists can also stick with licensed companies and ask about biotoilets, waste disposal and engine emissions when deciding which operator to book with.
If the existing rules were followed, says Dr Bhaskar, the lake environment would improve. But various agencies oversee, for example, flora and fauna census, land reclamation, licensing of boats and resorts, pollution control, and water and soil conservation. There are unregistered homestays. The number of unlicensed houseboats and resorts, she estimates, is as much as two or three times the number of licensed ones.
She would like to see regulating agencies coordinate better and simply enforce existing rules, and local panchayats and the community play a more active role in conserving the lake. Tourism and the community share a profitable relationship, she feels. “With a few safeguards we can maintain the relationship.”