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Greenpeace sees effect of climate change in Kochi

KOCHI: Kochi is in the frontline of India’s seaside cities that will attract the wrath of climate change in the form of inundation due to sea level rise spurred by global warming.

A large swath of the city will go under Arabian Sea if global temperature rises by 4-5 Celsius and, as a result, sea level rises by five metres, warns Greenpeace quoting projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This, of course, is a worst-case-scenario where global greenhouse gas emissions go unchecked and no mitigation steps are taken. But, even the best-case-scenario projects a 2 Celsius rise in global temperature, which will whip up the average sea level by a metre causing extensive coastal inundation and miseries to coastal communities.

For the best-case-scenario to happen and global warming contained within an average 2 Celsius temperature rise by the end of the century, strong and immediate mitigation steps need to be taken by the government and communities to drastically reduce greenhouse emissions.

To encourage the government to adopt policy measures that will help drastically reduce greenhouse emissions, Greenpeace on Monday launched a campaign in Kochi and five other cities in the country. Greenpeace officials told a news conference here that the international environmental NGO would enlist the support of the MPs from these cities to raise climate change as a hot issue in Parliament and make it part of the current political discourse.

They said visionary changes in industrial and energy policies were required to cut the gas emissions and thus reduce climate change impact.

They pointed out that even a one-metre rise in sea level would pose a massive threat to humans and installations in Kochi. For instance, the Vallarpadam project would not survive, Fort Kochi and its heritage buildings would be gone and most of the tourism projects along the shoreline would be wiped out.

Inundation, erosion and saltwater seeping down to groundwater would be some of the impact of the sea level rise.

In the next couple of weeks, the Greenpeace activists would launch a series of activities to lobby the support of the people and politicians for the mitigation cause.

‘Eviction notices’ would be displayed on the buildings along the shore to symbolically tell the coastal communities that those building would be destructed by sea waves and their residents forced to relocate.

Quoting a study, they said some 125 million people would be forced to migrate in South Asia, especially in Bangladesh and India. These ‘climate refugees’ would span out into the inner towns and cities in India. This would be a massive human disaster. The five other coastal cities where the campaign was launched were Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Puri and Panaji.

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