India’s Vanishing Mangroves: How Quiet Encroachment Is Redrawing Kerala’s Coast

Further inland, the change becomes more visible. A football ground has been carved directly out of what was recently mangrove forest. The edges of the field still carry signs of clearing, with stumps and disturbed soil interrupting the surface. The ground has been filled with red earth and compacted enough to support regular use. Children play there in the dry season, but during the monsoon the same field floods, revealing that the underlying wetland system remains active. The land has not fully transformed; it has been temporarily overlaid with a different function.

Carved directly from the forest, this new football ground serves the community in the dry season but reverts to a flood zone during the monsoon, proving the wetland beneath is still fighting to breathe. Image credits - Robert Bociaga/AMC

Around the field, new buildings are beginning to appear. They do not dominate the landscape yet, but their presence narrows the remaining wetland space. Each structure reduces the area available for water absorption and wildlife, fragmenting what was once a continuous ecosystem into smaller, disconnected patches.

This fragmentation is already affecting bird behavior. Egrets, which would typically gather deeper within mangrove habitats, are now observed congregating in open, altered spaces. In Chelembra village (in the south Indian state of Kerala, India), they gather near a roadside shop where organic and household waste is discarded along the water’s edge.

At the same time, the wetland continues to support local livelihoods. Crab hunters move along the edges, probing the mud for burrows and extracting catches with the help of traps. Sand is also being removed from shallow channels. These activities are not new, but as the wetland shrinks, their impact becomes more pronounced. Changes in sediment and water flow begin to alter the structure of the ecosystem, weakening its ability to regulate itself.

 Encroachment by Stealth

What is visible in Chelembra closely mirrors patterns that have been formally documented in the nearby Kottooli wetlands, where environmental groups and residents have tracked encroachment more systematically. There, unauthorized construction, debris dumping, and mangrove destruction have been recorded over several years, not as a single coordinated project but as a series of incremental actions.

“There were 37 unauthorised constructions in Kottooli wetland area, and several private parties continued to carry out construction work by destroying mangroves and filling the wetlands,” said K. Ajaylal, an activist involved in documenting violations. He also pointed to attempts to protect certain large commercial structures within the wetland despite their questionable legal status.

Residents describe how these changes often occur in ways that are difficult to detect in real time.

“It took us time to realise that attempts to cut out a road through the mangrove forest… were all part of some diversion tactics,” said P.M. Jeeja Bai, noting that landfilling was taking place simultaneously in another part of the wetland.

Others have reported watching soil being brought in gradually, often under unclear circumstances.

These accounts point to a pattern in which small, dispersed actions collectively transform the landscape while avoiding immediate scrutiny. Over time, such practices create conditions for more permanent conversion of wetland areas into buildable land.

A seller displays a harvest of mussels; however, as sediment flow and water quality shift due to landfilling, the future of these coastal resources remains uncertain. Image credits - Robert Bociaga

 The Enforcement Gap

 Activists argue that this process is enabled not only by individual actors but by systemic failures in enforcement.

“The buildings on the wetland would not have materialised without the authorities allowing it,” said Sandeep Pandey, an activist, during a visit to Calicut. His statement reflects a broader concern that administrative inaction, selective enforcement, and procedural delays effectively allow encroachment to continue.

While direct evidence of bribery in specific Kottooli cases has not been publicly established, the pattern aligns with a wider network of wetland conversion practices documented across Kerala. Investigations by the state’s Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau in 2025 identified a recurring nexus involving real estate agents, builders, and officials, where wetlands are gradually filled, reclassified, and converted for commercial use. The method is consistent: land is acquired at low cost, incrementally filled with soil, and later legitimized through administrative processes.

In Kottooli, activists have raised concerns that similar dynamics may be at play, pointing to continued violations despite stop memos and court directives. The persistence of unauthorized structures and the slow removal of illegally dumped soil have reinforced perceptions of unofficial protection or, at minimum, institutional reluctance to act decisively.

Red soil is brought in to fill the wetlands, creating a permanent elevation that prevents the mangroves from ever returning. Image credits - Robert Bociaga

Legal intervention has provided some constraints, but its impact remains limited by timing and enforcement gaps. The Kerala High Court has ordered a halt to new construction in ecologically sensitive areas of Kottooli while the process for stronger environmental protection is underway. The court warned that allowing further development could cause permanent environmental damage and undermine existing conservation frameworks.

However, these orders primarily address future activity, not reversing changes that have already occurred. Land that has been filled remains elevated. Structures that have been built continue to stand. The legal process, while significant, operates more slowly than the physical transformation of the landscape.

 The Cost of Slow Protection

 This mismatch between the pace of environmental change and the pace of legal response is central to the current situation. By the time a case is heard, violations have often progressed beyond easy reversal. Enforcement depends on multiple agencies, each with overlapping responsibilities, leading to delays and gaps in accountability.

The environmental consequences are becoming increasingly visible. Wetlands that once absorbed excess rainwater now struggle to perform that function, contributing to localized flooding during the monsoon. In Chelembra, the seasonal submergence of reclaimed land indicates that the hydrological system remains active beneath altered surfaces. At the same time, the loss of vegetation reduces the area’s capacity to regulate temperature and filter pollutants, affecting both ecological and human health.

These impacts do not always appear directly connected to wetland loss. They emerge as separate issues—flooding, water stagnation, declining biodiversity—making it harder to trace them back to their underlying cause.

A local fisherman harvests crabs from the shrinking wetland channels—a traditional livelihood threatened by the steady loss of the mangroves' protective root systems. Image credits - Robert Bociaga

What is happening in Chelembra and Kottooli is not an isolated event but part of a broader pattern of urban wetland reduction in Kerala. The process is incremental, often informal, and difficult to capture in a single moment. It involves a combination of local livelihood practices, small-scale land conversion, and larger structural pressures linked to urban expansion and real estate demand.

The result is a landscape that continues to function, but in a diminished and unstable form. Wetlands persist, but as fragments rather than systems. Their ecological roles are weakened, even as their physical presence remains visible.

At the edge of the mangrove in Chelembra, this transformation is already underway. The boundary has shifted, not dramatically, but enough to change how the land behaves. What remains is not the original wetland, but a version of it that is being steadily reshaped—by use, by neglect, and by decisions that unfold more quickly on the ground than they are ever addressed in law.

-Asia Media Centre

Banner image - Egrets, traditionally deep-forest dwellers, are forced into human settlements to scavenge for waste as their natural mangrove habitats are fragmented by encroachment. Image credits - Robert Bociaga