EVERY YEAR on World Wetlands Day (February 2), the world is reminded of the importance of wetlands. The global theme of World Wetlands Day this year, “Wetlands and traditional knowledge: Celebrating cultural heritage”, emphasizes the cultural importance of wetlands, supporting life on earth from time immemorial. It reminds us our duty to protect this precious invaluable resource. Wetlands are lifelines, protecting water quality, buffering floods, sustaining biodiversity and supporting livelihoods. For Manipur, this message is not abstract or symbolic. It is immediate, local and urgent.
Wetlands are nature’s infrastructure that has been long neglected, overexploited and needs protection. This is particularly true for Manipur whose identity is deeply intertwined with 132 wetlands at present (DoE&CC, 2025).Wetlands and water bodies are under increasing threat due to urbanization, encroachments and increasing water pollution.
ALSO READ | WWD2026: A world without wetlands is a world without lives
Keishampat, Porompat, Lamphelpat, Takyelpat, and several other areas that were once water bodies are now highly populated urban regions. Further, water bodies, low-lying marshes, and village ponds that once acted as natural treatment plants, filtering waste and regulating water flows, are now stagnant, dying, and pushed beyond their limits.
Owing to the increasing population and urban growth, particularly in and around Imphal, there is an increase in wastewater generation, while centralized sewage treatment remains inadequate. The result is visible everywhere: polluted rivers, foul-smelling drains, eutrophication, fish decline, and health risks.
Increasing use of fertilizers and pesticides are also major threats to our wetlands and water bodies. It must be reminded that when wetlands are lost or degraded, various ecosystem services are lost and the society pays the price.
As the state faces growing water pollution, urban expansion and extreme climate stress (floods) finding a sustainable nature based solutions is the need of the hour. In this respect constructed and floating treatment wetlands, especially phumdi-inspired systems like phumdi-based floating treatment wetland system offer one of the most practical pathways to restore balance between development and nature.
ALSO READ | Ecological Ethics in Tribal Religious Traditions: Pathways to Sustainability
The constructed wetland and floating treatment wetlands systems are modern solutions rooted in nature. These systems are engineered ecosystems designed to mimic natural wetland processes. Using aquatic plants, microbes and controlled water flow, they remove organic pollutants, nutrients and pathogens from wastewater without heavy energy or chemical inputs.
Constructed wetlands can act as an effective water retention basin providing essential flood control at the time of flood or release water during lean or dry periods and thus acts as natural buffer towards extreme climate events.
In a floating treatment wetland system, plants grow on buoyant platforms, with roots hanging directly into polluted water, absorbing nutrients and hosting beneficial microbes and depurating the water.
Strategically placed floating treatment wetland system along drains and tributaries can intercept pollution before it enters the lake. Intercepting or treating pollutant at point of origin must be adopted. As such, floating wetlands within degraded zones can further treat and polish water quality while restoring habitat complexity.
One of the most effective ways to protect Loktak Lake is to stop pollution at its source or point of origin by treating wastewater before it enters the lake, using constructed wetlands or floating treatment wetland systems. Allowing polluted water to flow into Loktak and then relying on large-scale dredging or emergency clean-up measures is neither sustainable nor cost-effective. Such reactive approaches address only the symptoms, not the root causes of degradation. Meaningful restoration of Loktak requires a preventive, upstream treatment strategy, where pollution is intercepted and treated well before it reaches the lake.
Apart from treatment of polluted water, the constructed wetland and floating treatment wetland system provides multiple benefits. One of the ecosystem services these systems provide is sustainable food production through integration with other food production models such as aquaculture, hydroponics, and wetland-based aquaponics, transforming wastewater treatment sites into productive, living landscapes. Such approaches are not merely theoretical; they already exist in nature such as those in the traditional practice of the Chinampa systems of Mesoamerica, the wetland-based farming cultures around Inle Lake in Myanmar, the WaruWaru systems of the Andes, and the floating vegetable gardens and lake-based livelihoods of Dal Lake in Kashmir.
In terms of cost effectiveness and ease of deployment, unlike conventional sewage treatment plants, constructed wetland and floating treatment wetland systems are low cost, low electricity demand and do not require complex machinery or highly specialized operators. Once established, they are self-sustaining and resilient, making them ideal for resource-limited settings. They can be integrated into urban drains, institutional campuses, market areas, rural clusters, lake inflow channels. This decentralization aligns perfectly with the saying: work with nature, not against it. It can improve urban aesthetics and create green public spaces making smart cites, support birds, fish, and pollinators and help in conservation and bio-diversity enhancement.
The construction and maintenance can generate local employment and public awareness and ownership. They are not just environmental projects but are social and economic investments for future generation.
Way Forward for Manipur
World Wetlands Day 2026 should not end with speeches, slogans and posters. For Manipur, it must become a turning point that translates awareness into policy-backed, on-ground action. This means initiating pilot projects on constructed and floating wetlands in Imphal and its peri-urban areas to demonstrate their technical and social viability, integrating phumdi-inspired wetland designs into urban and regional planning frameworks, and fostering strong partnerships among academic institutions, government agencies, and local communities for design, monitoring, and long-term management.
Above all, wetlands must be formally recognized as essential public infrastructureon par with roads, drains, and treatment plants rather than being viewed as vacant or expendable land.
Manipur today stands at a critical crossroads. One path leads toward worsening pollution, shrinking wetlands, rising public health risks and an increasing dependence on costly, energy-intensive technological fixes that are often difficult to sustain. The other path offers a more resilient and forward-looking choice, one that embraces nature-based solutions grounded in Manipur’s ecology, traditional knowledge and lived experience with wetlands.
However, which route Manipur ultimately chooses will depend on the wisdom and foresight of policymakers, administrators and scientifically informed interventions, and on their ability to translate ecological understanding into practical, long-term action.
On this World Wetlands Day, the way forward for Manipur is unmistakably clear. Past efforts to protect the wetlands of the state have often fallen short, largely due to insufficient long-term commitment from both the public and governing institutions. Short-term, quick-fix measures cannot address problems that are deeply ecological and cumulative in nature.
Protecting Manipur’s wetlands does not mean struggling against nature or replacing it with complex, unsustainable technologies; rather, it requires trusting, restoring, and strengthening the natural processes that have sustained this landscape for generations.In this context, constructed wetlands and floating treatment wetland systems can play a transformative role.
When designed to work in harmony with the existing natural wetlands of Manipur, these systems enhance the natural capacity of the landscape to filter polluted water, moderate floods, support diverse life forms, and restore ecological balance. By strengthening rather than replacing natural processes, they enable the land to recover quietly, efficiently and sustainably. Through such approaches, Manipur can protect not only its wetlands, but also secure its water resources, conserve biodiversity and safeguard the state’s long-term environmental and social well-being.
(The views expressed are that of the author. The author, Dr.Maibam Birla Singh is Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, Dhanamanjuri University, Manipur. The author can be reached at birla_26@yahoo.co.in)