Shrinking Indian Islets spell sea change

During my childhood, these islets used to be way bigger than they are now,” recalls Thangaraj, an octogenarian fisherman living in Chidambaram, a coastal district in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The islets are part of the Pichavaram-Coleroon estuary complex, which houses the Pichavaram Mangroves – the second largest mangrove forest in the world, consisting of 51 islets interspersing a vast expanse of water covered with green trees. These islets have been shrinking over the years, according to local fisher folk, as the sea continues to slowly but steadily invade the land.
But where is the regulation? Despite such significant data, India’s national climate action policy doesn’t touch on coastal areas. In 2009 India framed its National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) before going to the UN climate negotiations at Copenhagen. The action plan spells out a series of both mitigation and adaptation activities to be undertaken in a bid to address the climate challenge. However, the plan does not mention one word about the impact of climate change on India’s coast. “This is primarily because the policy has been framed in a top-down approach with scant attention to the coasts,” says Dr. A. Ramachandran, Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation Research in Chennai.

In a bid to address this lacuna, the Government of Tamil Nadu is drawing up a separate state action plan on climate change with sustainable coastal management as its top priority. “While the NAPCC’s focus is primarily on the northern part of the country, we are framing a separate set of policy guidelines to address the problem. But this can only succeed if other coastal states also follow suit and frame similar policies. But implementing that is not within the ambit of our state Government,” says Ramachandran. His centre has been working with the Government of Tamil Nadu to bring out a state policy.

Meanwhile, the Indian government has drawn up its so-called Coastal Zone Regulation (CRZ) – but it barely considers the issue of climate change and rising sea levels. “The CRZ has been framed with the idea of regulating commercial activities along the coast. This has primarily been done to conserve threatened species and regulate development. There is no climate change perspective to this regulation,” says S. Vasudevan, a legal expert based in Chennai.