Orissa government looks for ways to stall
beach erosion, does not recognize climate change
The rising sea level has alarmed the Orissa government. It has decided
to combat it with geo-tubes. Orissa’s director of environment,
Bhagirathi Behera chaired a meeting on May 18 on the Integrated Coastal
Zone Management Plan in which he said, “We are preparing to install
geo-tubes composed of sand-filled high-grade rexine in areas being
eroded by the sea”. According to Behera, “Geo-tubes can weaken the
impact of the land-eroding sea waves while withstanding the shock,
unlike stone walls which start showing signs of ravage soon.” First the
government plans to install a 700-metre long geo-tube at Pentha in
Kendrapara district, where the first cases of the sea engulfing
villages were reported.
Satabhaya
beach has shrunk by 300m since 2005
The meeting came up with a Rs 100-crore World Bank funded plan to save
Orissa’s coast with an agenda to reforest mangrove depleted areas, save
Olive Ridley turtles and ensure livelihood of fishing and other
dependent communities. Activists, however, point out the futility
behind yet another fund driven plan that focusses only on the eroded
areas, forgetting that the ingress of the sea is the result of rapid
industrialization, a process that has been furiously wiping out
mangroves. This has led to climate change on Orissa’s coasts.
Arttabandhu Mishra, an environmentalist, says, “This is just treating
the symptom, not the cause”. Noted environmentalist Biswajit Mohanty
adds, “Orissa is blindly violating Coastal Regulation Zone rules and
industrialization along the coast has been happening at the cost of the
mangrove forests”.
The ground reality is that in a span of 50 years more than 1,000 sq km
of mangroves in Orissa have been reduced to a mere 219 sq km.
Remote-sensing pictures taken by Salyut-7 during the 1970s revealed
that every year nearly 2.5 sq km of mangrove vegetation was lost to
industrialization. According to government sources, until 1940, the
entire Mahanadi delta was covered by mangroves. Today, most islands
wear a denuded look. The damage started with the construction of
Paradip port in the 1960s when more than 2,500 hectares of forests were
sacrificed. The Paradip-Dhamra belt has since then emerged as a highly
cyclone-prone zone.
Using satellite maps and assessing other coastal country data, a World
Bank report of 2007 confirms that with a metre of sea-level rise,
approximately 194,000 sq kms and 56 million people in 84 developing
countries would be affected. In India, Orissa is the most vulnerable to
rise in sea-level; a metre of sea-level rise here will inundate about
800 sq km. The Satabhaya sea level rise case is an ominous pointer. In
2005, when this correspondent visited this area, about 1,000 people
lived in two villages: Satabhaya and Kahnpur in Kendrapara district.
The sea has since advanced nearly 300m inward, forcing about 150
families to migrate. The sea waves have already forced the opening of a
new mouth in the Chilika Lake which has the potential to drastically
change the hydrological character of Asia’s largest brackish water
lagoon.
Now with the Bay of Bengal threatening to erode larger tracts of
coastal Orissa, the government on August 12, decided to rehabilitate
all families from the Satabhaya area to a location of their choice.
Each family would be entitled to 2 acres (.8 ha) of agricultural land,
2 decimals of homestead land and money equalling the value of a low
cost Indira Awas Yojana house. The Satabhaya villagers however suspect
this move as a pre-election stunt.
Earlier on August 6, the government decided to raise walls on the Puri
beach at a cost of Rs 7 crores, a scheme which is supposed to be
implemented soon. Last year, the Gopalpur beach was eroded drastically
but it is not yet in the plan.
The matter once again comes back to square one, say environmentalists;
the government is busy hatching more management plans, instead of
considering the impact of climate change due to global warming and
developing a scientific plan to save the coast of Orissa, before it is
too late.
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/full6.asp?foldername=20080930&filename=news&sec_id=50&sid=31
Copyright
© Society for Environmental Communications.
