Replenishing Water Resources

Humans learn the best wisdom from nature. Nature is the best teacher. Nature throws challenges at us and we find innovative solutions to fight those challenges. These challenges vary from terrain to terrain and so the solutions.

However, modern times have brought in a trend of ‘one solution fits all’ policy. This modern policy overshadowed the local solutions and wisdom as backward and we tended to apply some imported wisdom to solve local problems.

As time went by, smart people started realizing that as far as nature is concerned, imported solutions don’t work for local problems and there is really no ‘one solution fits all’ policy. Having realized this, people started going back to the local solutions and they gained results everywhere.

One such wise person is Sachin Marty from Vasai. Vasai is a uniquely located basin between Tungareshwar forest and Arabian Sea. It has a very good rainfall, but all the water from the hills and mountains used to go straight to the sea leaving the area thirsty for the rest of the year. As a solution to this problem, locals had dug small lakes locally called as “Bawkhal” all over the area. The area of these lakes ranged from a few square meters to a few square acres. These lakes served as the reservoir for rain water throughout the year.

With growing population and reducing farmlands, these lakes were ignored in the last few decades. This ignorance impacted a lot of life as every lake had a ecosystem of it’s own. A lot of organisms ranging from little algi and plants to insects and animals thrived around each such lake. All these lives were in danger.

A young man, Sachin Marty from Vasai could see that things were going the wrong way. So he decided to study this issue. He found out that there are more than 500 such lakes in the region. He then started making people aware of what a treasure their land held. Then he started replenishing such lakes by first cleaning them. Many had become the local garbage dumping sites. However, her convinced people to clean those, helped them do so and now those lakes have started storing water once again.

Sachin has single handedly been able to replenish 6 such lakes so far. Little Planet Foundation wishes him all the best in his endeavor and urges everybody to do their bit in saving nature around them. Because ultimately, if he can, we can too!