Nikhil Chinapa: Managing our rivers is vital to health

Mumbai: Veejay Nikhil Chinapa is trying to draw attention towards the environment, particularly water management.

“From the time I started diving two decades ago, the amount of plastic in our oceans has surged. Pristine reefs now have plastic wrappers and packets floating through them, often getting caught on corals,” Nikhil said.

“Single-use plastic is one of the key ocean pollutants along with micro plastics that have now found their way into plankton — the basic food source of all living creatures in the ocean,” he noted.

Nikhil is trying to do his bit to raise awareness about environment pollution.

“I’m trying to bring to focus the environment and, more importantly, the water crisis we are currently in the middle of. As a nation, we survive from monsoon to monsoon, which is extremely risky. ‘Survive’ is the apt word as a single failed monsoon will lead to an agrarian and humanitarian crisis in a heartbeat. Preserving and properly managing our rivers, basins and tributaries is vital to the health of the land and population that lives on it,” he said.

“We also need to pay attention to a critical area of water management — which is groundwater depletion. Focusing on recharging the groundwater aquifers will have enormous benefits for us as a nation with a growing population, whose economy is significantly driven by agricultural growth. Better management will also mean resorting to local and traditional methods of harvesting and storing rainwater,” summed up Nikhil, who is supporting the campaign against environment pollution on “MTV Roadies Revolution”.