The threat posed by rising sea levels is as critical as that posed by foreign invasion, said a Japanese delegate Ishikane Kimihiro at the UN Security Council’s special open debate on the impact of sea-level rise on international peace and security in February last year.
He was not exaggerating. The threats of climate change are real and despite repeated warnings and experiences of anti-nature infrastructure development, our urban planners do not learn any lessons. Worse, our lawmakers are hardly bothered.
The drowning glory (pun intended) of the so-called development under the shelter of Prime Minister Awas Yojana (PMAY) in Navi Mumbai coasts is a glaring example of such neglect of the tidal threats.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres' Warning
Major cities on every continent including Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Lagos, London, Mumbai, New York and Shanghai, warned UN Secretary-General António Guterres at the Security Council meeting.
Rising seas threaten lives and jeopardize access to water, food and health care, while saltwater intrusion can decimate jobs and entire economies in key industries like agriculture, fisheries and tourism. Citing the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) latest data, he said that global average sea levels have risen faster since 1900 than over any preceding century in the last 3,000 years.
The global ocean has warmed faster over the past century than at any time in the past 11,000 years, he said, adding that, even if global heating is miraculously limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, there will still be a sizeable sea-level rise, Guterres said.
India representative Ruchira Kamboj said at the same meeting that small island developing states are at the forefront of climate and sea-level rise, the worst sufferers of a global problem they did not contribute to. Reducing their vulnerability and enhancing their resilience should be a collective responsibility of the international community, she said, calling for enhanced action to fulfil commitments on climate finance and technology transfer.
India has a coastline of 7,500 kilometres and several groups of islands located far from the mainland, she recognized the adverse impact of sea-level rise — but stressed that the Council is not the place to address climate change or that issue.
What Our Politicians Do
I think that was a lopsided view. Security does mean saving people from wars alone. It includes health security, food security, security of properties and lives as well. We must take a cue from what the Japanese delegate said and become a bit serious about securing people from environmental threats, rather than pushing them more and more into it for quick electoral gains.
Not that our politicians do not talk about it. What is alarming is that they do not go beyond lip service.
I discussed the Security Council proceedings at length to remind ourselves of the imminent threats as the government does not seem to care much about it. Public apathy and official neglect is equal to an invitation for a disaster.
The then Union Minister of Earth Sciences, Kiren Rijiju in a written reply in the Lok Sabha on August 2, 2023, said that sea-level rise in the North Indian Ocean occurred at a rate of 3.3 mm per year in the last two and half decades (1993-2017), while the frequency of severe cyclonic storms over Arabian sea has increased during the post-monsoon seasons of 1998-2018.
There was apparently no discussion on the issue though the Minister said that India’s average temperature has risen by around 0.7 degrees Celsius during 1901-2018. He also mentioned that the frequency and spatial extent of droughts in India increased significantly during 1951-2015. In sharp contrast, the frequency of daily precipitation extremes (rainfall intensities >150 mm per day) increased by about 75% during 1950-2015.
Climate Change Is For Real
These all indicated that climate change is for real, yet the elected representatives do not care about it and the urban planners enjoy a free hand to build increasingly into the sea, rather than opting for development away from the tidal influential areas and hard soil.
Returning to the burning issues closer home, the rampant development along the coasts is bound to endanger the lives and properties in the near future. Scientists the world over have also been stressing that coastal areas will drown by 2050 which is just about 25 years away. But the rise in sea levels will not happen on the new year eve of 2050. The phenomenon is happening daily, weekly, monthly and annually which we do not seem to notice.
As environmental lovers and concerned citizens, our worry is about the knowledge hubs, massive ports, places of worship such as the Tirupati Balaji temple at Ulwe coast, the coastal road is not even a stone’s throw from the high tide line (HTL) – the place where the sea water reaches. Instead of caring about the advancing HTL, we are pushing it back into the sea.
We have been taught in our primary schools that water finds its own course. But we seem to forget this basic principle of nature and foolishly try to stonewall the tides.
(The author is a media veteran, an environmentalist and Director at NatConnect Foundation).
