Wetlands provide a plethora of nature’s goods and services, constituting unique socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS) that ensure food, water, and livelihood security, especially for the poor. However, Osinuga and Oyegoke (2019) observed that these SEPLS are still excluded from mainstream conservation and are facing serious threats owing to anthropogenic pressure in the milieu of climate change. This has led to habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, and deterioration of ecosystem services, widening the poverty trap. Bassi et al. (2014) acknowledge that Indian peri-urban wetlands are degrading faster due to both biotic and abiotic threats like drainage and landfill, over-exploitation of fish resources, discharge of industrial effluents, uncontrolled siltation, and weed infestation, and the ill-effects of fertilisers, pesticides, and detergents. Reports in the India Water Portal reveal that the South Asian ecoregion is losing 25 km2 wetlands per square kilometre of urban encroachment (Bansal, 2020), a rate even faster than the loss of forest cover (Reddy et al., 2018). One-third of wetlands in the Indian subcontinent have already been severely degraded, warranting policies for the management of this critical ecosystem. In the context of climate change, the mitigation potentials of wetlands are very high, though urban planning for the conservation of wetlands in smart cities
is meagrely addressed (Mcinnes, 2014). 

This chapter documents the success of a rights-based, neo-economic conservation model, entitled “Bio-rights of Commons” in two such peri-urban Ramsar wetlands of eastern India, the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW) and the Deepor Beel Wetland (DBW). These wetlands were on the brink of being removed from the Ramsar list owing to deteriorating habitat health and biodiversity loss (Ghosh & Das, 2020; Saikia, 2019). After successful implementation of the bio-rights project, both wetlands are able to better support the livelihoods of the communities dependent on them for ecosystem services (ESs). The project has contributed to wetland habitat restoration and prevention of biodiversity loss, and simultaneously, sustainable intensification of ESs has substantially contributed to health benefits for the communities during the present pandemic. 

EKW is a multifunctional sewage-fed wetland complex, spanning a 12,741- hectare area in the Bhagirathi-Ganga riverine floodplain that naturally recycles nearly 250 million gallons of sewer water and removes around 237 kg of biological oxygen demand (BOD) per day (Bhattacharyya et al., 2012). It was recognised as the world’s largest natural resource recovery ecosystem in the fringe of Kolkata Metropolis by the Ramsar Secretariat in 2002. Until 1830, tidal flow from the Bay of Bengal through rivers and rivulets drenched this area with saline water; but in the latter half of the nineteenth century, as the rivers dried out due to siltation, the area started receiving urban wastewater and local communities began wastewater fish farming (Ghosh & Sen, 1987). Since then, local indigenous communities have been traditionally managing the sewer flow to regulate the nutrient load, thereby leveraging the natural resource recovery system of EKW for intensive fisheries and organic farming
(Ghosh, 2005). EKW provides an array of ecosystem services to support livelihoods and the wetland environment relating to provisioning of wastewater recycling, food and fish production, flood protection, and more. It also harbours a rich biodiversity of fishes, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and plants (Ghosh, 1990). 

DBW is an oxbow lake of the Brahmaputra River, situated in close proximity to the city of Guwahati. It is a typical wetland ecosystem within the Burma Monsoon Forest Biogeography region that provides various goods and services to the local community and animal population of the Rani-Garbhanga reserved forests, which are adjacent to the wetlands and house nearly 120 Asiatic elephants (Mitra & Bezbaruah, 2014). DBW is traditionally managed as a major fish breeding and nursery ground by three indigenous fishing communities for supplying fish stocks to other nearby waterbodies while conserving the local fish biodiversity. Almost 750 households in 14 fringe villages are directly dependent on the wetland for fishing and collection of herbaceous plants (Mahadevia et al., 2017).

Both of these wetlands are declared Ramsar sites. Biophysical and socio-economic studies have been carried out, and management plans for the wetlands have been proposed. Yet, the current approach to management appears fragmented,and innovative ways are needed to conserve and protect the ecosystem services of the wetlands (Mukherjee, 2011). A thorough institutional analysis and responses to demands arising from impacts on wetland ecosystem services due to urban expansion are needed. Moreover, a large number of poor who depend on the ecosystem services of the wetlands are still excluded from the decision-making processes of these SEPLS (Dey, 2008). 

This chapter explores a rights-based approach to poverty alleviation and SEPLS conservation. It reviews bio-rights as a community-based neo-fiscal conservation paradigm for protecting ecosystems of global ecological importance by compensating the opportunity cost incurred by the communities living in the vicinity and dependent on the environmental goods and services of the ecosystem. The global average compensation cost would not be difficult to accomplish if technological cooperation and developmental resources were equitably extended to such communities. Bio-rights is therefore a sustainable neo-financing mechanism where the poor can be empowered to protect the ecosystem services that they depend upon. It is envisaged that a better institutional management framework that includes bio-rights can be developed to safeguard the ecosystem services of the wetlands, facing the menace of urbanisation.