Rising sea level threatens Sunderbans inhabitants
December 3rd, 2009 - 7:53 pm ICT by ANI ( 1 comment )Sunderbans (West Bengal), Dec.3 (ANI): Rising sea levels has forced thousands of families to leave their ancestral houses and lands in the Sunderbans area of West Bengal, and many more are living in the constant fear of losing theirs.
At least 10,000 inhabitants have been turned into environmental refugees and another 70,000 are in the danger of meeting the same fate over the next thirty years, environmental experts say.
After a 10-year study in and around the Bay of Bengal, oceanographers say the sea is rising at 3.14 millimetres a year in the Sunderbans against a global average of 2 mm, threatening low-lying areas of India and Bangladesh.
Sugato Hazra, an oceanographer at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, who led the team that conducted the study, said an increase in the sea temperature was compounding the problems for the islanders.
“In Sunderbans the impact (of global warming) is very high because not only the coastline is retreating and we are losing islands and losing land at the rate of say, in 30 years we have lost 90 square kilometre area including two islands. A lot of people have become environmental migrants but also high intensity cyclones are increasing in Bay of Bengal because of the rise in the sea surface temperature,” said Hazra, director of the School of Oceanography at the Jadavpur University.
According to a United Nations climate panel report, human activity was causing global warming and it predicted more droughts, heat-waves and rising seas.
But for the Sunderbans, made up of hundreds of islands, criss-crossed by narrow water channels and home to many of India’s dwindling tiger populations, the threat is more immediate.
At least 15 islands have been affected but erosion is widespread in other islands as well, Hazra said.
A combination of drought and then heavy rainfall this year plus increasing soil salinity have made it impossible to grow enough food to survive on traditional agriculture alone.
At least four million people live in the islands spread across 9,630 sq. km (3,700 sq. miles) of mangrove swamps. (ANI)
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Tags: bay of bengal, capital of west bengal, constant fear, droughts, environmental experts, environmental refugees, global average, heat waves, high intensity, narrow water, oceanographer, oceanography, rising sea levels, sea surface temperature, sea temperature, soil salinity, square kilometre area, tiger populations, two islands, water channels
January 7th, 2012 at 4:35 pm
While the Earth has always endured natural climate change variability, we are now facing the possibility of irreversible climate change in the near future. The increase of greenhouse gases in the Earth?s atmosphere from industrial processes has enhanced the natural greenhouse effect. This in turn has accentuated the greenhouse ?trap? effect, causing greenhouse gases to form a blanket around the Earth, inhibiting the sun?s heat from leaving the outer atmosphere. This increase of greenhouse gases is causing an additional warming of the Earth?s surface and atmosphere. A direct consequence of this is sea-level rise expansion, which is primarily due to the thermal expansion of oceans (water expands when heated), inducing the melting of ice sheets as global surface temperature increases.
Forecasts for climate change by the 2,000 scientists on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) project a rise in the global average surface temperature by 1.4 to 5.8°C from 1990 to 2100. This will result in a global mean sea level rise by an average of 5 mm per year over the next 100 years. Consequently, human-induced climate change will have ?deleterious effects? on ecosystems, socio-economic systems and human welfare.At the moment, especially high risks associated with the rise of the oceans are having a particular impact on the two archipelagic states of Western Polynesia: Tuvalu and Kiribati. According to UN forecasts, they may be completely inundated by the rising waters of the Pacific by 2050.According to the vast majority of scientific investigations, warming waters and the melting of polar and high-elevation ice worldwide will steadily raise sea levels. This will likely drive people off islands first by spoiling the fresh groundwater, which will kill most land plants and leave no potable water for humans and their livestock. Low-lying island states like Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives are the most prominent nations threatened in this way.“The biggest challenge is to preserve their nationality without a territory,” said Bogumil Terminski from Geneva. The best solution is continue to recognize deterritorialized states as a normal states in public international law. The case of Kiribati and other small island states is a particularly clear call to action for more secure countries to respond to the situations facing these ‘most vulnerable nations’, as climate change increasingly impacts upon their lives.