Ocean & Coastal Management 44 (2001) 355–369
Integrated coastal management of Mumbai
metropolitan region
Raj C. Murthy
a,
*, Y.R. Rao
a
, Arun B. Inamdar
b
a
National Water Research Institute, 867 Lakeshore Road, Burlington, Ont., Canada L7R4A6
b
CSRE, Indian Institute ofTechnology, Powai, Mumbai, India
Abstract
Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) is the largest coastal city in India. The region
experienced tremendous growth over the years due to rapid industrialization and
urbanization. MMR is also the major center of economic activity in India. As a result there
is a continuous and constant influx of population from the rest of the country. The high
population density and uneven growth rate have resulted in serious environmental problems in
the MMR coastal region. This paper discusses several aspects of the MMR coastal region that
suffer from a wide variety of environmental as well as socio-economic problems due to
unplanned and non-integrated sectoral developmental activities over the years. These
problems need to be addressed in developing an Integrated Coastal Management plan for
the MMR coastal region. r 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
MumbaiMetropolitan Region (MMR) extends over an area of 4400 km
2
and
comprises of five municipal corporations, 15 municipal towns and seven non-
municipal urban centers (Fig. 1). The region is typical of the Deccan Basaltic terrain
with flat top mountains bordering the low lying coastal region that is traversed by
five major rivers.
The population of MMR presently is in the range of 16 million of which Greater
Mumbaicontributes 68% and covers only an area of 468 km
2
. The population of the
MMR in the year 2011 is expected to be 22.4 million of which Greater Mumbai share
is likely to be dropped to 58%. Fig. 2 shows the decadal population growth of
Mumbai city. The high population density and constant influx of people to this
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-905-336-4920; fax: +1-905-336-6230.
E-mail address: raj.murthy@odin.cciw.ca (R.C. Murthy).
0964-5691/01/$ - see front matter r 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 6 4 - 5691(01)00055-2