Bio-geo-chemical trade-offs of Ganga river system: An overview on its current challenges and potential management practices

The Ganga River symbolizes faith for Indians and provides various ecosystem goods and services to ∼600 million people who reside in its one million km2 basin that spans over 11 states of India. It provides water for domestic-agriculture-industrial purposes, transportation services, and recreational activities. Apart from various ecosystem goods and services, the river hosts a unique assemblage of flora-fauna in its basin. Urbanization, industrialization, and uncontrolled population growth led to the overuse of its goods and services. Consequently, it disturbed its natural relationship with chemical-physical components, organic-inorganic substances, and micro-macro organisms. This disturbance can be identified in terms of degraded water quality-quantity, loss of indigenous flora-fauna, the evolvement of exotic species, and impact on human health and well-being. Various management approaches/frameworks are now being developed to overcome this critical situation with their implementation challenges, financial issues, and side effects. In considering these issues, this chapter gives an overview of the bio-geo-chemical trade-offs of the complex ecosystem of the Ganga river system, its challenges, current management practices, and future research and development perspectives.