The Hindu : Kerala News : ‘Kochi in climate change zone’

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Monday, Mar 31, 2008
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‘Kochi in climate change zone’

Special Correspondent

Greenpeace puts up blue hazard signs at many places in the city

Kochi: ‘Climate change zone ahead,’ warned the blue hazard signs put at many points at Marine Drive, Kochi. Curious pedestrians and passer-by could not initially make out what they pointed to. Uniformed Greenpeace activists explained: these areas could go under water, or face other extreme consequences, as a result of the climate change in the decades to come.

Greenpeace activists, as part of their ‘Blue Alert’ climate change campaign, put up several such hazard signs at three places in the city on Sunday—on the foreshore close to Vasco Da Gama Square at Fort Kochi; on Jews Street, Mattancherry and at Marine Drive.

Greenpeace reckons that Kochi would be among India’s coastal cities which would be worst-hit by climate change caused by global warming. The international environmental NGO has launched the climate change campaign in six cities in the country, including Kochi, to drive home the need to take effective mitigation steps against global warming and climate change. Coast cities would be affected worst as a major manifestation of global warming would be a rise in the sea level. Even a marginal increase in the level of the Arabian Sea would lead to inundation and erosion of land areas. It could lick away substantial sections of foreshore.

The Greenpeace campaign intends to educate people on the fallout of climate change and to encourage them to take mitigation steps.

Greenpeace officials said that next week they would put up ‘eviction 2050’ notices at buildings on the Kochi foreshore. This is to warn the residents that those building would not survive in the year 2050 as the surging sea water caused by global warming would have washed them out.

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