Karnataka to West Bengal: How climate change is ravaging India's coastline

West Bengal has lost 99 sq km of land in the past 26 years, making up 63% of the state's coastline and equivalent to the area occupied by 18,500 football fields.

Business Standard : First, in 2011, the sea took away some of their land. Three years later, the waves demolished a section of their home. That is when Budhwant Karvi, 40, knew it was time to move but his elderly parents refused.

“They said we have lived here for generations and will continue to do so,” said Karvi, a worker on a fishing trawler that sails the Arabian sea.

Karvi’s home is in Pavinakurve, a village along the scenic Honnavar coast with blue waters reflecting the sky in Western Karnataka. The view from the home was once a narrow strip of sandy beach and the vast Arabian sea. On the right is the island of Basavaraj Durga, a popular tourist destination.

The view from Pavinakurve and the island of Basavaraj Durga in northwestern Karnataka. The sandy beaches of Pavinarkurve are being steadily eroded.

Seven years ago, the waves began to crash against the walls of Karvi’s home made of red, large bricks. “At times the waves would completely wash over our home and leave behind plastic bottles that were discarded in the sea by people,” Karvi said, pointing to the waste bottles on the land. Soon the sandy strip of the beach went under water. Then one by one the sea swallowed six guntas (1/7th of an acre) of the land the family owned, roughly six times the size of an average two-bedroom flat.

Millions living on India’s coasts are threatened as India has lost 33% of its coastline to erosion in 26 years between 1990 and 2006, according to a report released in July 2018 by the National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR) in Chennai, which is mapping changes to India’s shoreline, and is affiliated to the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

This is the second story in our series on how climate change is disrupting people’s lives (you can read the first part here). The series combines ground reporting from India’s climate change hotspots with the latest scientific research.

India has a coastline of 7,500 km--nearly three-and-a-half times the distance between Ahmedabad and Kolkata--divided almost equally on the east and the west of the country. Along it are nine states, two union territories (UT) and two island territories. Of the country’s 1.28 billion people, 560 million, or 43%, live within these coastal territories.

Of the coastline that is eroding, 40% is in four states/UTs alone. West Bengal has lost 99 sq km of land in the past 26 years, making up 63% of the state’s coastline and equivalent to the area occupied by 18,500 football fields. Puducherry has lost 57% of its coastline, Kerala 45%, and Tamil Nadu 41%, to heavy erosion.

India’s coasts are under attack both from man-made activities--such as growing construction, damming of rivers, sand mining and destruction of mangroves--as well as natural causes linked to climate change such as rising sea levels, according to the report... Read More