VANISHING UNDER THE SURGING SEAS

July 07, 2021

Located at the mouth of the holy river Ganges where it empties into the Bay of Bengal, the Sagar island attracts millions of Hindu pilgrims each January for the famous Ganga Sagar festival. This year, in a space of two days, around 5 million pilgrims gathered to bathe in the holy waters of the sea. However, at present, the Sagar island, and with it, the future of the entire festival, is under increasing threat due to the rising sea levels and coastal erosion. The Kapil Muni Temple, where the pilgrims used to offer prayers after a holy dip in the sea, had to be shifted several times in the past to avoid submergence under the turbulent waves.

Sagar island is part of the Sundarbans, home to the world’s largest mangrove ecosystem that nestled between Bangladesh and India. The Sundarbans have an archipelago of 102 islands, of which 54 are inhabited by more than 4 million people. Some of these islands, such as Bedford, Lohachara, Kabasgadi and Suparibhanga have already disappeared under the sea. Others like Ghoramara and Mousuni will soon be lost due to the continuous rising of sea level. Tens of thousands of people have lost their homes and, hence, shifted to safer places.

Sagar has been home to about 1,60,000 people who earn their livelihood mostly from agriculture and fishing. It is now facing the brunt of climate change in the form of coastal erosion, rising sea levels, unpredictable tidal surges, land salinity, violent cyclonic storms and extreme weather events affecting the lives and livelihoods of people leading to an increase in migration of the youth.

Back home in Odisha, the areas most affected by the sea level rise are the cluster of seven villages called Satabhaya near the port town of Paradip in the district of Kendrapara. While the land records in 1930 show an area of 320 sq. km for the Satabhaya cluster, the 2000 land records indicate that the area has been shrunk to a meager 155 sq. km with five of the seven villages being completely swallowed by the sea. It is alarming to note that the turbulent waters of the Bay of Bengal is expanding towards the coastal landscape at a brisk pace taking away many villages and fertile farmlands into its clutch all along the coastal belts of Ganjam, Puri, Jagatsinghpur and Balasore districts.

India’s coastline extends over 7500 km across nine states, two Union territories and two island territories of Andaman - Nicobar and Lakshadweep. There are 171 million people, roughly one-seventh of India’s population, living in 70 coastal districts in these regions, the majority of which are dependent on the sea for fishing. Four of India’s 10 most populated cities are on or near the coast facing the risk of submergence under the dashing sea.

The picture is not also good for many island nations around the world. Kiribati (Population: 107,800) in the Pacific, has lost at least two islets already while in the Marshall islands , home to 62,000 people, some 60 hectares of dry land (8.6% of the total land area) are in danger of being swallowed. Another island Vanuatu, with 212,000 people, still juts above the sea but lowly lying areas are being evacuated due to increasing dangers from the sea. People have started moving out of Papua New Guinea’s Carteret island that experts say might vanish very soon. The danger worries even bigger archipelagos like Indonesia and deltaic countries like Vietnam. More than 50% of Indonesia’s economy is coast-line based and at the rate that Global Mean Sea Level is predicted to rise, between 2 cm and 10 cm per decade, its low lying coastal cities like Jakarta and Surabaya will be under increasing threat. Similarly, half of Vietnam’s rice production as well as much of its fish catch comes from the Mekong delta. Changes in climate would bring about more typhoons, floods and soil degradations that could spell devastating for its economy. Scientists say a 1-meter rise in the Global Mean Sea Level would destroy 12% of Vietnam’s fertile lands. Similarly, Tuvalu, a small island nation of 9 tiny atolls and 12,000 people that spreads over 1.3 million square kilometers of the central Pacific Ocean has a land-mass of only 26 sq. km with its highest point just 5 meters above sea level. With the sea rising nearly by 3.0 cm per decade, there is a real danger that Tuvalu will one day disappear under the waves.

Closer home, Bangladesh has become highly vulnerable to the sea level rise. About 10% of Bangladesh is hardly 1 meter above the mean sea level and readings taken at Hiron point, Charganga and Cox’s Bazar show a steady rising of the sea. Experts believe that only a 1-meter rise of the sea level would wipe away almost 60% landmass of the country. The concern is equally high in the Maldives ( Population: 369,0000) as the UN's environmental panel has warned that at the current rate of sea-level rise, the sea would be high enough to make the country uninhabitable by 2100.

Over the past century, the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities have released enormous amounts of greenhouse gases (heat-trapping gases) into the atmosphere. These emissions have caused the Earth’s temperature to rise with the oceans absorbing about 80 % of this additional heat. Core samples, tide gauge readings, and most recently, satellite measurements indicate that over the past century, the Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) has risen by 10 to 20 cm. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 projected a high-end estimate of 60 cm (2 ft) rise in the Mean Sea Level by 2099. This is quite alarming! The rise in sea levels is linked to the thermal expansion of seawater and the melting of glaciers due to this global warming.

Hence, the sea level rise due to climate change has affected people, places, their lives and livelihoods worldwide and humanity must find an immediate solution to avert this impending disaster. There is an urgent need to retard the rate of global warming on our planet. This can be achieved by bringing down the emission of greenhouse gases at individual and collective levels. Phasing out of fossil fuels and increasing the implementation of green technologies is the need of the hour. Massive plantation drives should be undertaken to ensure more absorption of Carbon dioxide gas, one of the potential heat-trapping culprits. Our mantra should be ‘Think Globally, Act Locally.