CPREEC - EIACP Programme Centre, Resource Partner on Ecological Heritage and Sacred Sites of India

Union ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEFCC) Friday constituted a five-member team for conservation and management of Manipur’s Loktak Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Northeast India.

The team will look into the present status of work taken up for conservation of the lake besides enumerating steps being taken up for declaring the lake as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The Union ministry has asked the team to submit a report at the earliest, a statement of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) Imphal informed.

The team comprise of adviser to MoEFCC Dr.R Dalwani, DIG (WL) MoEFCC SP Vashisht, Sikkim unit in-charge of GB Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment & Sustainable Development Dr HK Badhola, deputy director of National River Conservation Directorate (NCRD) Chandan Singh and adviser to NCRD Brijesh Sikka. The team will visit Loktak Lake soon to hold discussions with the state government, its concerned agencies and other stakeholders.  The consultations will also include people living in the vicinity of the lake, it added.

Loktak Lake is the largest freshwater lake in Northeast India, and is famous for the phumdis (heterogeneous mass of vegetation, soil, and organic matter at various stages of decomposition) floating over it. 

Keibul Lamjao, the only floating national park in the world is in this lake.

Even as authorities of Manipur government and other concerned agencies were said to be working to conserve the lake, it has been facing all round destructions due to both natural and anthropogenic activities in the last few decades. 

Rapid expansion of ‘Phoomdis’, siltation, pollution, agriculture and Loktak Hydropower Project are some of the main problems which had led to an alarming destruction of the lake. 

Source: Nagaland Post