Civil Society News New Delhi

RATAN Mondol, 86, is one of the first environmental refugees from the Sunderbans. Old and bent, Mondal recalls how the rising sea destroyed his life.

“Erosion in the Sunderbans began 35 years ago,” he says with the resigned air of one ho has seen it all. “My grandfather shifted to Ghoramara island from Midnapore. When the British cleared the forest, he was one of the early settlers.”

The Mondols were prosperous farmers in Ghoramara. They owned 100 bighas. But over the years, chunks of it began to be swamped by the sea.

“The first major exodus began 15 years ago when all the fertile land in Ghoramara was swallowed by the swirling waters of the Bay of Bengal,” he says.One night, recalls his wife Ujjala, they woke up and found themselves surrounded by the sea.

The Mondols lost all their land. They took refuge in nearby Sagar, the largest island here. They watched as Lohachhara and Suparibhanga islands disappeared into the sea after 1982.

The Mondols were given one and a half bighas of land where they grow a little paddy. They have a house built under the Indira Awas Yojana and a small pond.

But Sagar is rapidly losing land, about 100 bighas every year. The Mondols don’t know how long they can live in Sagar for soon it will be taken away by the sea. For the Mondols, climate change and a rising sea have meant loss of self-respect and security and dependence on official largesse. Things are getting worse. There is no land to resettle new climate change refugees.

Rising temperatures are impacting people in ways that tend to get forgotten as the focus shifts to the high drama of summits such as the one at Copenhagen. The food and water security of millions, most of them poor, is being threatened even as conference delegates spar over carbon and energy intensity.

The hills and the coast are feeling the most heat. In the Himalayas, plant species are disappearing and glaciers shrinking. Farmers are confused about when to sow, fishermen find fish species vanishing. The sea’s ingress is turning sweet water, salty. Cyclones have increased in ferocity. The impact of global warming is compounded by human actions like deforestation and abuse of beaches.

“Published reports show that sea levels have indeed risen by 10 cm in the last century. The average is reported to be 1 to 1.5 millimetres a year,”says Antonio Mascarenhas, scientist at the National Institute of Oceanography in Panjim, Goa.

The developed world is mostly to blame for this mess. America emits 19.78 tonnes of carbon per person, Australia, 20.58 and Canada 18.81 tonnes. China emits 4.58 and India only 1.16 tonnes per person. Since the days of the Industrial Revolution, the western world has been emitting vast sums of carbon into the atmosphere.

Now India needs its share of the atmosphere to develop. But emission targets come in the way and weather changes are taking a heavy toll. Hill to coast, farm to forest, people are expressing their concerns over changes in their environment due to global warming.

Listen to what Anto Elias, fisherman and secretary, Kerala Swatantra Matsya Tozhilali Federation, and member, National Fishworkers Forum has to say: “Global warming has meant warmer waters and a change in the direction of ocean currents. It has affected the amount of plankton available for fish to feed. Many species of fish, especially the smaller variety, have completely disappeared. Bigger fish have also dropped in abundance. But the worst effect of sea rise has been the collapsing of beaches. Combined with uncontrolled sand mining, the rising sea is destroying fishing villages all along the Kerala-Kanyakumari coast. It has rendered at least 10,000 people homeless.”

If anyone cares to take a look Elias recommends you travel along the coast from Trivandrum, to Quilon, Kasaragod, Ernakulam and Alapuzha.

“Every high tide sees some villages washed away,” he says. “As beaches collapse, sea water rushes into coastal villages. Salty water from the sea destroys wells in our homes which were our main source of drinking water. In Trivandrum district, our wells are only yielding saline water. Groundwater sources have been destroyed.”

Neither the state nor the central government has done anything although promises have been made. Nobody has thought of having our fisher folk represented at climate talks though they bear the brunt of the angry sea.

Arable fertile land along the coast is shrinking. In December 2006, a tsunami hit the coast of Tamil Nadu. Nagapattinam was the worst affected. Bhuvana Kannan, an agricultural scientist has been helping farmers grow crops on lands destroyed by the salty waters of the tsunami.

“The most affected are landless agricultural labourers and small and marginal farmers, comprisreing about 85 per cent of the total agricultural population in Nagappattinam district,” she says.

Nagapattinam forms part of the Cauvery river basin and delta. The district has a coastline stretching to 190 km. Most of Nagapattinam lies either below sea-level or between 0-5 m above sea-level. It is vulnerable to inland flooding from the Cauvery River and sea water flooding. In 2008, Cyclone Nisha lashed the district.

“Sea water inundation is leading to salinisation of soil and groundwater,” says Kannan. “The situation is unlikely to improve since there is complete lack of drainage in the Cauvery delta. The rainfall of Nagappattinam district is only 970 mm, but lack of drainage and sea water flooding give the impression of very heavy rainfall. Since several parts of this district are below sea-level, the damage from flooding is real. Drainage congestion and floods add to poverty and food insecurity. People are forced to migrate and seek livelihoods in casual employment.”

Sand dunes and mangroves could temper the ferocity of the sea but these too are disappearing because of people’s actions. The result is erosion of sandy beaches. Dr Mascarenhas has been working on the protective aspects of natural formations like sand-dunes and mangroves against storm surges and tsunamis. This is what he has to say:

“In Goa, coasts get eroded only during monsoons.Published papers reveal that erosion is generally cyclic whereas beaches are rebuilt naturally during fair weather. Therefore, coastal erosion has been episodic, so far at least.”

During monsoons, he says, huge waves and high wind speeds lash the coast. Combined with high tide, the waves could travel further up the beach, to the base of dunes. “Although the dune base gets eroded, these geomorphic features ultimately neutralize wave energy and protect the hinterland,” he explains. “If sand dunes are absent or destroyed, as is the case at several places in Goa, the inherent natural protection capacity of the coast is lost. The result is erosion and over wash.”

Every beach should have dunes and mangroves. Coasts need spaces to function but all that space is taken up by people, says Dr Mascarenhas.

“Note that the coast in Goa has been tampered by humans. Some beach shacks are located on dunes and the dunes are razed. Some structures invade sand dunes to be close to the beach as in Candolim. A massive stone wall is found at Sinquerim dangerously close to the waterline. Such measures lack scientific validity and exacerbate erosive processes. The beach in front has disappeared. A sea wall should never ever be located within the reach of the waves,” he says.

Coastal erosion, he warns is not merely linked to global warming.

“I refer to coastal tourism and related activities. Although sand mining of dunes is rarely reported, the way coastal dunes are being treated is a cause of concern. Sand dunes have been razed, levelled, or simply removed. How then can one expect these geomorphic features to remain stable and perform functions they are meant for? The extravagant use of our coastal spaces bypasses all limits of imagination,” he says.

In the Himalayas, it is the same sad story. Nur Alam, 54, looks miserably at his dwindling herd of 200 buffaloes. He is a Van Gujjar and rears animals. Along with his tribe he lives in Chilawali village in the range of the Rajaji National Park, Haridwar district, Uttarakhand. Nur Alam is a worried man these days. He says his animals are dying. There is less rain and the weather is warmer.

“Dryness is spreading inside the forest,” he says. “Green grass is disappearing. Water sources are drying up. My animals are yielding less milk. This year we had no rain. This dry winter is harmful for animals. They are getting a disease in which they become very weak and die. Also, the dry grass is becoming infested with worms, making animals weak.”

Every year Alam goes to the high Himalayas during the monsoon with his herd. This year he migrated very late in August and returned by end September since it hardly rained. Amazingly, almost 50 per cent of Van Gujjars chose to stay behind. Milk yield has gone down and so have incomes. The proud, dignified Van Gujjars are being forced to work as daily- wage labourers to survive.

The high Himalayas have their own share of problems. Apart from melting glaciers, species are disappearing and there is increased human-animal conflicts. “The holy Ganga is threatened,” says Bauni Devi. A colleague of the legendary Gaura Devi, a key leader of the Chipko movement, Bauni Devi is a resident of Salana village, Chamoli district, and president of Jandesh, an NGO in Joshimath.

Bauni Devi was given the Indira Gandhi Vrikshamitra Award in 1987 for forest protection. She has made it her mission to conserve forests in the high Himalayas. A walk with her up to Kalpeshwar Mahadev, one of five Kedars in Chamoli district, is a revelation. The 10 km trek is covered with dense forest.

“Many species are disappearing in forests,” she explains. “Some which are almost extinct include atis, (Aconitum Hterophyllum), kutaki, (Picrorhiza kurroa) jatamasi (Nardostachys Jatamansi) and vankakadi (Podophyllum hexandrum). Fodder species like banj (oak) are also threatened. Plants in the upper reaches which treat cancer are becoming extinct because of warm weather and no snow. In the lower valleys, we used to collect a useful herb called guchi which is tough to find now.”

She blames the current development model for higher temperatures. “Our hills are drying up and resembling deserts. We don’t get much snow. It is now the middle of December and it has not snowed. There is no bone chilling cold anymore. Wild animals are not getting enough food, so they are attacking villages, resulting into people-wildlife conflict. We must act fast.”

If you travel down to the plains of Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh and talk to farmers they will tell you that the wayward weather and murderous dacoits had been ruining their crops. But they have found a way to get even with the rain gods by building water tanks.

“Rain has not only been scarce but also extremely erratic, deceiving us at critical times,” says Jugal Mawasi, a small farmer of Gursarai hamlet in Manikpur block of Chitrakut district. “Dacoit gangs also made it difficult to cultivate. But there is some hope. Now tanks are being constructed and water is available. The weather is a little better. Land which had been abandoned is being cultivated. Adverse weather doesn’t mean that there is no hope.”

“Earlier when agriculture failed, we could still get food from forests. But this time even forest produce declined alarmingly. We had no choice but to do daily wage labour to survive,” says Tulsa Kol a small farmer of Mangavaan village.

People need help to adapt to climate change, says Anurag Danda, of WWF’s Sunderbans programme. “A lot of investment is required. By indulging in a debate, we are disowning them. It is not a happy situation when people are losing their homes and their farms. There is no compensation plan for them.”

He is right. But who will pay the price is the big question.

Reported by Rina Mukherji, Rakesh Agrawal, Bhagwat Prasad

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