India has a vast coastline comprising of 53 coastal districts and six union territories, 15% of the total population lives in these areas. About 5770 km of coastline out of a total 7516 km is prone to Cyclone and Tsunami. The IPCC’s “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C” revealed that the impacts and costs of 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming will be far greater than expected. While changing climate poses challenges to humanity as a whole, the available evidence suggests that the developing countries are particularly vulnerable.

  India, which is located in the sub-tropics and surrounded by water on three sides, is vulnerable to many weather events. It faces many cyclones every year which are destructive. Approximately 12% (About 40 million hectares of land) is prone to flood and river erosion. The floods caused due to incessant rains in Kerala last year, Cyclones like Gaja, Vardah, Titli are a few instances. The super cyclone of 1999 which made a landfall in Odisha killed more than 10,000 people.  The Tsunami in 2004 wiped out many coastal districts on the eastern coast of India.

Apart from the damages to human lives, these weather events have an impact on the flora and fauna located on the coastal regions. The Mangrove forests, marine national parks, estuaries are affected. Critical Infrastructure like the nuclear power plants (Ex: Kudankulam), Airports, Seaports, Oil Rigs are at risk too.

The Governments at central and state level Measures taken by Government to reduce the impacts are:

Structural Mitigation measures:

• Cyclone walls built and Coral reef development promoted.
• Cyclone Shelters in high vulnerability areas.
• Natural Bio-shields (Mangroves) and Shelter belt plantations (Casuarinas) are done along the coasts. Maintaining Natural Sand dunes.
• Public Address systems and SMS service to alert the coastal citizens.

Non-Structural mitigation measures:

• Integrated Coastal Zone Management is  as  an  essential  institutional  mechanism that can deal with all competing pressures on a coast, including short-, medium-, and long-term 
• Cyclone zone mapping and Vulnerability index of the zones created.
• Strict implementation of Coastal Regulations Zone Act – (no development within 500 m of the high tide line with elevation of less than 10m above m.s.l).
• Land-Use Zoning done in accordance to Coastal Regulation Zone guidelines.
• The National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project started by the Ministry of Home Affairs should be strengthened to reduce the impact of catastrophic events.

Way Forward:

• Co-ordinated working of the National and State Disaster Management Authorities to tackle the issues more efficiently.
• The recently released National Disaster Management Plan based on the lines of Sendai Plan should be effectively implemented.
• Coastal States must focus on reducing the hazard through policies that expand resilient housing, build better storm shelters and create financial mechanisms for insurance and compensation.
• Coastal cities should be retrofitted using the smart cities initiative to make them more resilient.

Conclusion:

Coastal zones are prone to weather events. Therefore, it is upon us to mitigate and adapt accordingly to such catastrophes.