Smruti Koppikar
Seven islands off the Arabian Sea coast were joined in the 17th century by reclamations, causeways and breakwaters to form the thriving port city of Bombay. The pre-British Portuguese name for the islands, Bom Baim, meant good harbour. Created virtually from the sea, it’s not ironic that sea water now threatens the city as never before. Rising sea levels could well submerge Mumbai in the coming decades and leave its powerhouse economy as flotsam. Mumbai would have company in Chennai, Kolkata, Surat and other coastal cities facing the same threat.
The danger has been known for years — carbon emissions leading to climate change which led to rising sea levels and extreme weather events. Its urgency was brought home by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released on September 26 after the UN Climate Action Summit in New York. If carbon emissions aren’t checked, global sea levels could rise by one metre by 2100 submerging hundreds of cities, the report stated. Oceans absorbed most of the heat in the earth’s climate systems; heat has also been melting glaciers too leading to the rise in sea levels.
The world’s oceans have been warming and rising for decades but this phenomenon has been 2.5 times faster in the last 14-15 years than during the 20th century, oceans have turned more acidic, and have lost oxygen from their surface to a depth of nearly 1,000 metres, the report noted. These affected marine ecology and marine-based livelihoods. India has among the lowest emissions but this doesn’t matter because climate change impact is distributed without geographical discrimination.
Climate change is real, never mind the denial from sceptics, and it’s now at our shorelines. Science warned for decades, international and localised studies confirmed it, multilateral agencies made strategies and action plans, ‘climate resilience’ became a thing in urbanism circles, and political and corporate leaders name-dropped it in conference halls. The awareness and acknowledgement have led to disaster response strategies and early warning systems, but have not organically expanded to comprehensive, in-depth, and meaningful mitigation action. It’s like getting an alarming angiograph report but not taking the next corrective steps. This, then, is the real disaster.
The focus of all stake holders — especially federal and local governments, corporate sector — should have been on two inter-connected issues: mitigation measures and climate resilience plans. These would have involved getting citizens on board, studying available data, collating more granular data, building climate resilience into every aspect of urban planning and infrastructure development, rethinking and revising policies that encourage emissions (strategies and conditions for public transport or more cars, not gobbling up wetlands), and more.
No coastal city in India, including economic powerhouses such as Mumbai and Chennai, can boast of having comprehensively built climate resilience into its systems and infrastructures. In the largest urban programme of last five years, the Smart City Mission, climate change and climate resilience did not appear in a serious or fundamental way in any city’s proposal. Most proposals focussed on area-wise or project-wise infrastructure development.
Urban local bodies, such as the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation in Mumbai, are inundated with day-to-day work to make or operationalise a comprehensive climate resilience plan for the city. In fact, not only Mumbai but the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, with more than 20 million residents, needs a climate mitigation and resilience plan. Other coastal cities too need theirs. Time is running out, the IPCC report reminds us.
India is among the world’s worst-affected countries due to climate-induced natural disasters. Its largest and dense coastal urban agglomerations with such as Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Surat, and Vishakhapatnam are home to millions whose lives and livelihoods are at stake. These agglomerations or large cities house thriving economies, both formal and informal. They can ill-afford the kind of climate-related disruptions they have seen in recent years. Yet, authorities make a perfunctory nod to the issue now and then, usually after an extreme event.
Parts of Mumbai are already below sea level at high tide. Extreme rain events lead to heavy waterlogging, the city’s drainage systems prove inadequate, and sea water gushes right back into the city. Mumbai had a staggering 540mm of rainfall in two days this July and 922mm in only 18 days of September. Nearly every city has faced such onslaught in recent years. Intense rain and storm surges disrupt urban rhythms with an alarming regularity. Then, India’s cities are hotter than they were till 1980s with more extreme hot days and temperatures spiking beyond 35 degrees Celsius. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) says both events are increasing in both frequency and intensity.
Why imagine submergence of a city by 2100? The next 30 years could well see dramatic and disastrous impacts playing out as the sea turns from a benign resource to angry adversary. Rising sea level is a strong danger signal. We ignore it at our own peril.
Smruti Koppikar is a Mumbai-based journalist, columnist and urban chronicler. Views are personal.
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