Historic canals take centre stage as Kochi, India aims to blunt fallout from climate change

In Kochi, a major port on India’s western coast known as the “Queen of the Arabian Sea,” a dense network of rivers, creeks and canals was once the lifeline of the city.

The waterways were a transport route for people and goods, provided water for daily use, and drained monsoon stormwaters into the sea. But many have been neglected in recent decades amid rapid urbanization, some unplanned.

Buildings and bridges have encroached on the waterways, obstructing the flow. Untreated waste has polluted the increasingly stagnant waters. And invasive plants and mosquitos have replaced once-abundant fish and birds.

Climate change is only adding to the problems: sea-level rise, extreme rainfall events and tidal surges have increased the risk of major flooding in the city, which is home to about 600,000 people.

But a new effort by Kochi’s local authorities, supported by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is now underway to restore the city’s waterways, which are seen as crucial to helping the city adapt to the changing climate. The project, which has already got residents dreaming of canals clean enough for swimming, is part of UNEP’s Generation Restoration Cities initiative to advance nature-based solutions to urgent environmental challenges in urban areas around the world.

“Kochi’s stagnant, lifeless canals embody the three big environmental crises of our age: climate change, nature loss and pollution,” says Mirey Atallah, Chief of the Adaptation and Resilience Branch in UNEP’s Climate Change Division. “Reviving them will raise the city’s defences against these existential threats and give its residents a more liveable city and a safer future.”

To kickstart the restoration drive, UNEP and the Kochi Municipal Corporation have zoomed in on the Thevara-Perandoor Canal, or TP Canal, which runs for about 10 kilometres through the city’s central business district and several densely populated residential areas.

For years, experts and officials have discussed how to revive the TP Canal. A report by the municipality’s Centre for Heritage, Environment and Development, for instance, recommended reconnecting the canal and its ecosystem to other waterways, restoring its banks to increase biodiversity, and ramping up investments in sewage and waste management.

Authorities regularly dredge the canals to reduce the flooding that hits low-lying districts every year during the monsoon season. The more ambitious solutions have not materialized, in part – according to planners of the new UNEP-backed project – because of a lack of public and political support.

The new project seeks to overcome this barrier by helping residents and officials understand that the canal network is vital to tackling climate change. Rejuvenating the canals will help channel excess water, including from more intense monsoons, away from the city. Planting trees alongside the canals would also create green corridors that can help dissipate extreme heat, which experts say will become more frequent due to climate change. The rejuvenated canal network can also become a focus of renewed civic pride, says Rajan Chedambath, Director of the Centre for Heritage, Environment and Development.

Authorities regularly dredge the canals to reduce the flooding that hits low-lying districts every year during the monsoon season. The more ambitious solutions have not materialized, in part – according to planners of the new UNEP-backed project – because of a lack of public and political support.

The new project seeks to overcome this barrier by helping residents and officials understand that the canal network is vital to tackling climate change. Rejuvenating the canals will help channel excess water, including from more intense monsoons, away from the city. Planting trees alongside the canals would also create green corridors that can help dissipate extreme heat, which experts say will become more frequent due to climate change. The rejuvenated canal network can also become a focus of renewed civic pride, says Rajan Chedambath, Director of the Centre for Heritage, Environment and Development.

The Centre for Heritage, Environment and Development, which is implementing the project, has also consulted experts, including hydrologists and urban planners, and gathered residents and councillors to discuss a way forward.

Chedambath says senior residents recalled how the canal was once a source of clean, flowing water that people used for cooking and washing. The canal was wide enough for small traditional boats known locally as vanchis to transport materials across the city and still held enough fish at the turn of the century to provide a living for fishers.

“These things are now hard to imagine,” Chedambath says. “But we believe there is a strong and growing groundswell of public support for rejuvenating the canal.”

Project staff are incorporating feedback gathered from the consultations into an implementation plan to be presented to key stakeholders and potential investors.

The project also leverages insights from UNEP’s new innovative spatial planning tool, designed to help cities expand nature-based solutions by integrating environmental and population data, and other trends.

Chedambath emphasizes a phased approach, beginning with widely supported measures like pollution reduction and dredging informed by hydrological surveys. Later, the project would address the narrowing of the canals, whose banks have been extended to allow for the construction of homes and other infrastructure. Some of the canals are just 15 metres wide, a quarter of their former width.

Chedambath remains optimistic that the time is now ripe for the restoration of the TP Canal and the watery landscape in which the city is embedded.

“Until a few years back, nobody appreciated the importance of the canals. But the constant flooding and the other issues surrounding the canal mean that people and political leaders now are thinking very seriously about doing something about it,” he says. “People have realized that the state of the canals directly impacts life everywhere in the city, maybe even its future existence.”

Kochi is not the only city working to revive its waterways in the face of the triple planetary crisis: the crisis of climate change, the crisis of nature, land and biodiversity loss, and the crisis of pollution and waste

In the Bangladeshi city of Sirajganj, UNEP is supporting the municipality on restoring the Katkhali Canal and its surroundings. The aim is to create a “green corridor” to provide recreational space for citizens and habitat for wildlife while also reducing urban heat.

In Kisumu, Kenya, authorities are attempting to restore the Auji River. A UNEP-supported project there foresees solutions including revegetation, clearance of invasive species, and pollution reduction, as well as training for local communities in ecosystem management.

In Kochi, the long-term hope is to breathe life back into not only the TP Canal but also the city’s other waterways.

“The lesson that I hope Kochi will show us is that prevention is better than cure. And also that it’s never too late to restore urban waterways,” says UNEP’s Atallah. “And that when we do that, we make a tremendous difference in the lives of those who live in cities.”