India Shrinking
- The rising sea level, caused by climate change, is eroding our shoreline
- The freak rainfall pattern this year is being attributed to climate change
- Changes reported in Mahabalipuram, Cuddalore, Lakshadweep
- The Centre has set up a multidisciplinary team to study climate change in an India-specific manner
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The freak rainfall pattern this year—very heavy rain, but either very late or sporadic—is one of the few dramatic effects of climate change city-dwellers who think beyond the immediate inconvenience might have noted with some alarm. But the scientific evidence from the sky and the Indian coastline is more compelling.
Satellite pictures of the Sunderbans from 50-60 years ago show islands that have since submerged. More recently, scientists have reported on notable sea ingress and erosion along the Mahabalipuram and Cuddalore coasts and in the Lakshadweep islands. They warn that almost all of India’s extensive coastline, especially the deltaic regions, is in danger of being eaten away by the sea.
Waking to the complexity of the problem and the possible social upheavals the resulting displacement of people could cause, the central government has charged more than 200 scientists from across 127 research organisations with monitoring climate change in an India-specific manner. The multidisciplinary team—under the Union ministry of environment & forests—will look at all aspects of climate change and its impact across the country. The top priority: studying changes in the Bay of Bengal and their effect on the eastern coast.
At a recent seminar, S.S.C. Shenoi, director of the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, spoke of the dangers of “human displacement and damage in the coastal parts along the Bay of Bengal”. And, independently, Kushal Yadav, head of the climate change programme at the Centre for Science & Environment (CSE), New Delhi, an advocacy group, underlines the imminence of the danger. “A lot of changes have been seen on the Orissa coast,” he says. “Every six to 12 months, some small island or the other disappears.”
The multidisciplinary group also has a larger scientific task: creating an indigenous methodology for studying climate change without a heavy reliance on western models. The aim is to build long-term scientific capacity. An idea of the range of expertise the group draws on can be had from the fact that changes in Mahabalipuram are to be studied by the underwater team of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Beginning next month, the team will determine if the changes in the shoreline there are owing to a rise in sea level, changes in ground level, or regional changes. “After the 2004 tsunami, definite changes have been seen,” says Dr Alok Tripathi, who heads ASI’s underwater team. “There are wall-like structures below the water. We have to excavate to see if a rise in sea level caused the submergence or if the structures have been brought in by the currents.”
But scientists are also acutely aware the problem is of global magnitude, that local efforts are like band-aid against systemic disease. Leave alone reversal, even achieving minimal control over the effects of climate change could take up to 20 years of concerted international effort, in which the major carbon dioxide producers—the US, Europe and Japan—have to participate vigorously.
As Yadav puts it, there’s more to climate change than just rising sea levels. But among its infinite complexities, there are enough immediate effects for not only governments but also people leading city-cocooned lives to start worrying—the depleting water table, flooding, freak cloudbursts that leave you stranded for hours in traffic.
