Environment › Protected areas and habitats
Wetlands and Ramsar sites
Wetlands and lakes as places and as a category of law: Ramsar sites and the wise use a listing commits India to, the rules that protect a wetland at home, and the encroachment and floodplains that decide its fate. Prelims has matched wetlands to their States and asked what the Montreux Record implies.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2022: matching named wetlands with their States
- Prelims 2022: the wetland function that makes wetlands the kidneys of the Earth
- Prelims 2014: what the Montreux Record implies
3 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains
India's Ramsar sites
A Ramsar listing is a promise about how a wetland will be used rather than a fence around it, so what it changes on the ground depends entirely on Indian law.
- A Ramsar site listing commits a country to the wise use of the site, and is not by itself a protection order under Indian law.
- Domestic protection comes from the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules and from whatever protected area category the wetland happens to fall inside.
- Glaw Lake was designated India's 101st Ramsar site, and Arunachal Pradesh's first.
- It lies inside the Kamlang Tiger Reserve and Wildlife Sanctuary in the Eastern Himalaya, fed by perennial mountain streams.
- More than 150 tree species and 49 orchid species are recorded at the site and in its catchment.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2019: the Ramsar Convention and the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2010
PIB, 3 Aug 2026: Glaw Lake becomes India's 101st Ramsar site (opens in a new tab)
5 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains
Mining buffers around wetland reserves
A national park carries a regulated belt around it; a conservation reserve carries none, and that is the gap the Supreme Court has been closing one order at a time.
- Unlike a national park or a sanctuary, a conservation reserve or community reserve carries no statutory buffer zone of its own.
- Activity that needs clearing near such an area goes to the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife, the Environment Ministry, or both.
- The Supreme Court clarified orally that its 2024 order on the Asan Wetland Conservation Reserve was never about Asan alone.
- Mining within 10 km of any wetland conservation reserve or community reserve in the country now needs prior approval before it can begin.
- Asan, where the Asan meets the Yamuna in Uttarakhand, has been a Ramsar site since 2020.
27 Aug 2026 · Prelims and Mains
Urban lakes
A city lake takes the stormwater a drain cannot, cools the air above it and recharges the water under it, so losing one costs a city more than a view.
- Urban lakes were argued to be climate infrastructure, sponge systems against heat islands and flooding, rather than sites for beautification.
- Unplanned growth, land prices, sewage and solid waste drive the loss, and eutrophication follows.
- The Comptroller and Auditor General has flagged over 500 lakes lost in Jammu and Kashmir since 1967.
- Hyderabad has lost roughly 61 per cent of its lake area since 1979.
The Hindu, 27 Aug 2026: Urban lakes need restoration, not quick fixes (opens in a new tab)
1 Sep 2026 · Prelims and Mains
The Indo-German Environment Forum
Two governments can record an intention to work on wetlands together without either of them taking on an obligation, and a Joint Declaration of Intent is the instrument for it.
- India and Germany signed one on the conservation and wise use of Wetlands of International Importance.
- It covers shared wetland science, restoration and community participation.
- It was signed at the 4th Indo-German Environment Forum, held since 2008 and the highest level bilateral forum between the two countries on environmental policy.
Also filed elsewhere
- Bakhira Lake and the monsoon record · on Climate science: records, attribution and tipping points
A sediment core holds the only record of climate from before instruments, which is how natural variability is separated from human induced change.