Mumbai's mangroves are disappearing, and with them, the city's last defence against rising seas
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
Mumbai’s mangroves, its natural shield against floods and rising seas, are rapidly disappearing. A major coastal road project between Versova and Bhayandar will destroy over 45,000 mangroves, replacing them with trees planted far inland, which offer no coastal protection. These ecosystems are crucial: they reduce flooding, store massive amounts of carbon, and support local fishing communities. The trade-off largely benefits private car users while putting the entire city at greater climate risk. As sea levels continue to rise, this decision highlights a deeper conflict between development and environmental survival, raising urgent questions about how cities like Mumbai plan their future.
Mumbai's sea levels are rising at 4.5 mm per year. The city has already lost 40% of its mangroves since 1991. And the response to that accelerating risk is to clear 45,675 more trees for a coastal road that primarily serves private car users.
In December 2025, the Bombay High Court permitted the construction of a ₹20,000 crore, 26-kilometre road connecting Versova to Bhayandar. The mangroves standing in its path have no legal protection left. Their replacement? Trees planted in Chandrapur, 850 kilometres away, an inland district with no coastline, no tidal ecosystem, and no ecological connection to the damage being done.
Table Of Contents
What Is the Versova-Bhayandar Coastal Road, and Who Does It Actually Serve?
Picture Courtesy by Wildcasm
The Versova-Bhayandar coastal road is an extension of Mumbai's existing coastal road project, being constructed in sections along the Arabian Sea through the city's northern suburbs. According to the BMC's own figures, the project could impact more than 103 hectares of forest land, the majority of it mangrove ecosystems. Of approximately 60,000 mangroves in Mumbai's northern coastal stretch, 45,675 have been earmarked for destruction or significant impact. Around 9,000 trees in the Malad and Charkop creek areas face permanent removal.
The SANDRP and Question of Cities analysis frames the project's economic logic directly: this is "public money, private gain." A ₹20,000 crore public investment that primarily benefits private car owners and taxi users while permanently destroying a shared ecological asset that protects every resident of Mumbai, regardless of whether they own a vehicle.
Residents of Charkop Sector 08 understood this early. Activist Mili Kishore Shetty filed an RTI with the BMC Bridges Department in May 2025 seeking approvals, environmental clearances, and work orders related to the interchange near Charkop. Her finding: on-ground impacts were never independently reassessed once final alignments and interchanges were fixed. Twenty-two residential towers sit on the northern side of the Charkop mangrove boundary. The southern edge is lined with mangroves separated only by a boundary wall. The coastal road formalises construction pressure on an already-stressed ecosystem that has no buffer left to give.
What These Mangroves Actually Do?
The commute-time argument works because traffic in Mumbai's northern suburbs is genuinely bad. But the ecological cost accounting is almost never put in the same document as the travel-time projections. So here it is.
1. The 2005 Floods Are Not Ancient History
During the 2005 Mumbai monsoon disaster, a northeastern suburb sitting next to over 2,000 acres of intact mangroves came through largely unscathed. The mangroves held water, slowed inundation, and functioned as the natural stormwater drain that the city's engineers had built over. The worst flooding hit areas constructed on reclaimed land that had previously been mangrove forest, including a major commercial district in central Mumbai that was underwater for days.
Mangroves reduce wave energy by up to 66%. That number comes from peer-reviewed research, not environmental advocacy brochures. Mumbai's sea levels are rising at 4.5 mm annually, according to World Meteorological Organization data. Removing coastal flood infrastructure while the sea climbs is not a trade-off. It is a decision to pay for it later, at much greater cost, in damage rather than prevention.
2. The Carbon Problem Nobody Is Counting
Mangroves store 3 to 5 times more carbon than land-based tropical forests, locked in coastal soil for decades. Clearing mature trees does not just stop future sequestration; it releases what has already been stored. Mumbai is simultaneously pursuing climate commitments through various policy channels while approving a project that directly contradicts them. That contradiction has not been resolved in any public document connected to this approval.
3. Fishermen, Fish, and What Gets Lost
Fish lay eggs on mangrove roots. This is not a metaphor; it is how coastal fisheries function. For the Koli communities whose settlements line Mumbai's northern coast, the destruction of mangrove habitat means declining catches, reduced storm protection for their boats, and the slow erosion of a livelihood system that has existed for generations. None of this appears as a cost line in the project's economic justification.
Mumbai's mangroves also support flamingo migrations to Thane Creek every year, along with mudskippers, crabs, herons, and mangrove species like Avicennia marina that have adapted specifically to the city's saline, heavily polluted coastal conditions. That ecological specificity matters. None of it can be replicated in Chandrapur.
The Chandrapur Plan Deserves More Scrutiny Than It Has Received
Chandrapur is 850 km from Mumbai. It is inland. It is already forested. Trees planted there will not buffer wave energy hitting Charkop. They will not protect Malad from the tidal surge. They will not provide breeding habitat for fish in Mumbai's northern creeks. They will not cool Versova's urban temperatures or stabilize the coastline at Bhayandar. The ecological services provided by coastal mangroves are tied entirely to location, tidal hydrology, and coastal soil chemistry. None of those conditions exists in Chandrapur.
Conservation Action Trust's Debi Goenka has made this point for years: there is no suitable habitat left within Mumbai's limits for genuine mangrove replanting. The tidal hydrology required for mangrove survival has been disrupted across most potential restoration sites by surrounding development. The Wadala salt pan case is instructive, even after a court-mandated restoration there, the work faced fundamental limitations because compacted substrate and altered tidal flow make planting largely cosmetic.
There is also the matter of the Bombay High Court's own 2018 ruling, which stated that mangrove destruction "offends the fundamental rights of citizens." The same court approved this road in December 2025. That contradiction has not been addressed in any public statement connected to the project.
The comparison to the Aravalli controversy is apt. When the Supreme Court accepted a definition of the Aravalli hills that reduced their legal protection, the response was national outrage and sustained pressure for review. The mangrove destruction authorized for the Versova-Bhayandar road involves larger ecological stakes and a more direct threat to a major city's climate resilience. The public response has been considerably quieter.
What Is Actually Happening Across Mumbai's Mangrove Belt?
Picture Courtesy by Mumbai Rains
The coastal road does not exist in isolation. Mumbai Mirror's nine-point field investigation across the MMR coastal belt documents the same playbook repeating at location after location, Diva-Mumbra, Thane-Rabodi, Navi Mumbai, Malwani, Charkop, Vikhroli, Cuffe Parade, Wadala, Dahisar-Borivali. Construction debris gets dumped in mangrove zones. It chokes the pneumatophores, the breathing roots. Tidal exchange gets cut off. The mangroves die standing. The land gets labelled "degraded" and quietly converted to buildable plots.
Vanashakti has filed complaints to divisional commissioners, chief conservators of forests, and environment authorities across multiple locations. The response, documented across years of follow-up, has been limited. Environmental activist Jayesh Gupta, working in the Diva-Mumbra belt, described the pattern directly: "First, the mangroves are encroached, then they're deemed degraded, and finally, the land is quietly handed over to the builder lobby and land mafia."
Against that backdrop, one example stands out. In August 2020, Dharmesh Barai of Nerul started cleaning polluted mangrove shores by himself. By 2026, he will lead 90,000 volunteers through the Environment Life Foundation, having removed over 750 tonnes of waste from Mumbai's mangroves. That is what genuine compensatory action looks like, not a tree plantation 850 km away.
What ₹20,000 Crore Could Have Built Instead?
Metro and suburban rail expansion in Mumbai's northern suburbs would have served a far broader cross-section of commuters, including the majority who do not own private vehicles at comparable or lower ecological cost. The commute-time benefit of the coastal road flows almost entirely to car owners. Public transport investment flows to everyone.
A unified coastal enforcement command, the collector's office, forest department, police, and ward machinery operating together, with GPS-tagged debris trucks and route audits of construction waste carriers, would address the debris dumping pipeline at its source. Demolition drives without prosecution are a documented failure. Violators price them in as a business expense and resume operations. Time-bound prosecution backed by satellite monitoring is what actually changes behaviour.
The Maharashtra Mangrove Conservation Unit has existed since 2012. It has an institutional structure. What it has consistently lacked is enforcement teeth and political backing. Scaling up what Dharmesh Barai's volunteers are already doing, with institutional support rather than in spite of institutional indifference, is a more credible use of public funds than a coastal road that removes the ecosystem those volunteers are trying to save.
Citizens who want to act have clear options. Vanashakti's legal challenges against the project are active. RTIs can be filed with the BMC and the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority. The Supreme Court can be petitioned to review the Bombay High Court's December 2025 approval, and SANDRP has explicitly called for this. The Aravalli case shows that sustained citizen pressure at the apex court level can produce results.
Conclusion
Mumbai's mangroves are not a green amenity. They are functional infrastructure — absorbing flood water, holding the coastline, storing carbon, sustaining fisheries — in a city whose sea level is measurably rising every year. The Versova-Bhayandar coastal road trades 45,675 of those trees for a faster drive for private car users, with ecological compensation planted in a forest district that has nothing to do with Mumbai's coast. That is not a balance between development and the environment. It is a climate liability written into a court order.
The Aravalli case drew national attention because people understood what was at stake. The same understanding is needed here, and the same response.
Mumbai's coast still has people willing to fight for it. Stay informed, share what you know, and support the organisations working on the ground. Follow Greenmyna on Instagram to stay connected with the efforts working to protect what remains.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How many mangroves will be destroyed for the Versova-Bhayandar coastal road?
Of approximately 60,000 mangroves in Mumbai's northern coastal stretch, 45,675 have been earmarked for destruction or significant impact. Around 9,000 trees in the Malad and Charkop areas face permanent removal. As of March 2026, the Supreme Court has allowed the feeling to proceed.
2. What is the actual environmental cost of the Mumbai coastal road project?
Permanent loss of mature mangroves that reduce wave energy by up to 66%, release of carbon stored in coastal soil for decades, destruction of fish breeding habitat that sustains Koli fishing communities, and increased flood exposure in a city where sea levels are already climbing at 4.5 mm per year. The northern coastal stretch being cleared is one of the last large contiguous mangrove sections Mumbai has left.
3. Why does planting trees in Chandrapur not count as genuine compensation?
Because coastal mangrove ecology is location-specific. The services these trees provide, tidal surge buffering, wave energy reduction, coastal soil stabilisation, and marine fish breeding, depend entirely on being in a coastal intertidal zone. Chandrapur is 850 km inland and already densely forested. Nothing planted there will protect Mumbai's coastline. Urban mangrove restoration also has a documented high failure rate once tidal hydrology is disturbed, which makes in-situ conservation the only credible approach.
4. Has anyone legally challenged the coastal road's mangrove destruction?
Yes. Vanashakti has filed legal challenges against the project. Charkop residents filed RTIs with the BMC in 2025. The Bombay High Court approved construction in December 2025, a decision that SANDRP and other environmental analysts have called scientifically indefensible and have urged citizens to petition the Supreme Court to review, particularly given the same court's 2018 ruling that mangrove destruction offends citizens' fundamental rights.
5. What can ordinary Mumbai residents do about this?
Support Vanashakti's legal challenges. File RTIs with the BMC and the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority. Write to the Supreme Court requesting review of the December 2025 approval. Join or support the Environment Life Foundation's conservation work. Talk to ward representatives with documented evidence of encroachment in your area. The Aravalli case demonstrated that sustained, organised citizen pressure at the apex court level can shift outcomes. There is no structural reason the same approach cannot work here.
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