Author: Nidhi Jamwal

Nidhi Jamwal is an independent journalist based in Mumbai.

Indian Ocean Headed for a Near-Permanent State of Marine Heatwave

Higher water temperatures associated with marine heat waves can cause extreme weather events such as tropical storms and cyclones and disrupt the water cycle, making floods, droughts, and wildfires on land more likely.

In the peak of summer, with heat waves sweeping several parts of India, seven-phase general elections are underway in the world’s biggest democracy. The weather department and the government agencies have been regularly issuing alerts and warnings, to ensure the safety of citizens who step out to cast their votes, amid fear of heat strokes and heat-related illnesses as temperatures rise and heat waves turn deadlier.

But heat waves are rising not just on land. Globally, marine heat waves are registering a growing trend. A recent study titled Future Projections for the Tropical Indian Ocean has found that the Indian Ocean is warming rapidly and moving towards a state of near-permanent marine heat waves, with 220-250 days of heat waves projected in a year until 2050.

The findings of this new research, led by Roxy Mathew Koll, scientist with Climate Research Lab, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, are published in a recent book, The Indian Ocean and its Role in the Global Climate System, released on April 26.

“In the present-day climate scenario, where we are experiencing 1.2-degree Celsius warming, marine heat waves have already emerged in the Indian Ocean and are rising; at present, they range up to 20 days a year,” said Koll, talking to Mongabay India about the implications of prolonged marine heatwaves in the Indian Ocean. “But, by 2050, we are expected to breach the two-degree Celsius mark, and these heatwaves are likely to increase to 220-250 days, which is two-thirds of a year. We are calling it a permanent heatwave state for the Indian Ocean,” he said.

“These prolonged marine heatwaves will not only intensify cyclones but also affect fish migration, coral reefs, phytoplanktons and marine biodiversity,” warned Koll, who is also the lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.

The projected heat waves in the Indian Ocean are of concern as nearly 250 million people live within 50 km of the Indian coastline (3.5% of the world’s population). The 8,118-km long coastline is also home to more than seven million people who depend on fishing for their livelihood.

Projected rise in marine heat wave days per year in the Indian Ocean from 1950 up to 2100. About 220-250 days of marine heat waves are projected in a year in the Indian Ocean until 2050. Graph source: Roxy, M.K. et al, (2024). Chapter 20: Future projections for the tropical Indian Ocean. In C. C. Ummenhofer, & R. R. Hood (Eds.), The Indian Ocean and its role in the global climate system (pp. 469–482). https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-822698-8.00004-4

Rising marine heatwaves in the Indian Ocean

Global warming is leading to rapid warming of the oceans as these vast water bodies store an estimated 91% of the excess heat energy trapped in the earth’s climate system by excess greenhouse gases.

The term ‘marine heatwave’ is relatively new. It was first used to describe an extreme surface warming event off the west coast of Australia during 2010-11 austral summer. Thereafter, it was first identified in 2013 when it resulted in mass mortalities in marine mammals and birds, and the collapse of fisheries and aquaculture in Korea and the U.S.

Marine heatwaves are defined as events where ocean temperatures rise to extreme levels and hold steady for at least five days. In the recent study led by Koll, marine heatwaves are defined as periods of extremely high temperatures, i.e., sea surface temperature (SSTs) exceeding the seasonally-varying 90th percentile threshold based on the 1970–1999 reference period or hotter than 90% of the typical temperatures for each season.

In recent decades, the tropical Indian Ocean has experienced a rapid increase in ocean warming with an average rise in SST of about one degree Celsius over the period of 1951-2015 at a rate of 0.15 degree Celsius per decade. Research shows that the western Indian Ocean had a total of 66 marine heat wave events while the Bay of Bengal had 94 events during the 1982-2018 period.

Further, the western Indian Ocean region experienced a four-fold rise in marine heat wave events (increasing at a rate of 1.5 events per decade) and the north Bay of Bengal experienced a two-to-three-fold rise (at a rate of 0.5 events per decade), according to Jitendra Singh, the then Minister of State for Earth Science, in a written reply in Rajya Sabha in 2022.

India has a long coastline and around seven million people depend on fishing and allied activities. Marine heatwaves are a direct threat to their livelihood. Photo by Nidhi Jamwal

India has a long coastline and around seven million people depend on fishing and allied activities. Marine heatwaves are a direct threat to their livelihood. Photo by Nidhi Jamwal.

Climate scientists are worried about the ‘near-permanent marine heatwave’ in the Indian Ocean.

“Due to global warming, all the global ocean basins are warming up. The Indian Ocean is warming much faster than other basins. For tropical cyclone intensification, oceans play an important role,” M. Rajeevan, one of India’s top climate scientists and former secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, told Mongabay India.

“Ocean heat content, which is heat content in the ocean waters say up to 100 metre or so, and other atmospheric conditions influence cyclone intensification. With increasing SSTs and ocean heat content, there is a tendency for cyclones to intensify quickly once a storm develops. This is seen in all ocean basins. With future projections, this tendency will only increase in the future,” he explained.

According to Koll, the average sea surface temperature in the Bay of Bengal is between 28 and 30 degrees Celsius. During a marine heatwave, this temperature can reach up to 31-32 degrees Celsius. “Through in-situ ocean measurement, we saw temperatures reaching up to 34 degrees Celsius in the Bay of Bengal, which is the highest recorded temperature anywhere in the open oceans,” he said.

“The 33-34 degrees Celsius marine heatwave preceded Cyclone Amphan in May 2020, which is one of the strongest cyclones in the history of the Bay of Bengal,” he added.

According to him, experts who have been monitoring ocean temperatures for a very long time are shocked to record such extreme temperatures.

Increasing cyclone intensity 

Higher water temperatures associated with marine heat waves can cause extreme weather events such as tropical storms and cyclones and disrupt the water cycle, making floods, droughts, and wildfires on land more likely. Extremely warm waters act as a strong source of heat and moisture, helping cyclones to intensify rapidly.

Another recent paper by Koll, on heat waves, notes that between 1980 and 2020, about 90% of the cyclones in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea were preceded by marine heatwaves. “Marine heatwaves are intensifying cyclones which go through a stage of rapid intensification wherein a cyclone goes from category 1 cyclone to category 3 or category 5 cyclone in a short duration of time,” explained Koll.

The destruction caused by Cyclone Fani in 2019 when it hit Puri in Odisha. At present, the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale rates a cyclone’s strength from category 1 to category 5. Experts advocate for adding one more category. Photo by Nidhi Jamwal.

The destruction caused by Cyclone Fani in 2019 when it hit Puri in Odisha. Extremely warm waters act as a strong source of heat and moisture, helping cyclones to intensify rapidly. Photo by Nidhi Jamwal.

At present, the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale rates a cyclone’s strength from category 1 to category 5. Category 1 cyclones have wind speeds between 119–153 km per hour. Category 2 has wind speeds between 154–177 km per hour; Category 3 includes wind speeds between 178–208 km per hour; Category 4 is between 209–251 km per hour; and Category 5 is greater than or equal to 252 km per hour.

According to Rajeevan, since there is a clear tendency of increasing tropical cyclone intensity, the present classification of cyclones using five categories may not serve the purpose. “If we want to convey the seriousness of this issue, we need to add one more category of category 6 cyclones to warn the people appropriately,” he said.

Fishers on the edge

“Fishing communities are already living on the edge. Various development projects on the coast are encroaching on fishing villages and worksites of fishers. They are also polluting the sea. And global warming and marine heatwaves are worsening their plight,” said D. Paul of the Democratic Traditional Fish Workers Forum, Andhra Pradesh.

According to Paul, rising frequency and intensity of cyclones is a direct threat to the livelihood of fishers, considering there is already an annual fishing ban of 61-day around the monsoon on both the coasts of the country, including Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep. All fishing activities are banned during this period except traditional non-motorised boats, which can continue fishing.

On the east coast of the country, this ban comes into force from April 15 till June 14, whereas on the west coast, it starts from June 1 and ends on July 31.

“On paper, a fishing family is eligible for a compensation of Rs. 10,000 for two months during the fishing ban. But many do not receive it. During cyclones, fishers again cannot go to sea and cyclones are on the rise. How will the fishing communities cope?” asked Paul.

Rising frequency and intensity of cyclones is a direct threat to the livelihood of fishers. Photo by Nidhi Jamwal.

Rising frequency and intensity of cyclones is a direct threat to the livelihood of fishers. Photo by Nidhi Jamwal.

According to Koll, the livelihoods of coastal fishing communities are at risk. “Because of the warming of the waters of the Arabian Sea, algal bloom is taking place. Fish migration is also being affected. Fishes migrate from the equator to poleward, or they dive down for cooler waters. But because the sea surface temperature becomes warm compared to subsurface waters, it prevents the mixing of water, which is important because the nutrients for microscopic plants are in the subsurface,” he told Mongabay India.

A 2015 study published in Geophysical Research Letters reported a decrease of up to 20% in phytoplankton – microscopic marine algae that serves as food for marine life – in the western Indian Ocean region over the past six decades. According to the authors, this reduction is due to the warming of the ocean.

Prolonged marine heatwaves are also a risk to coral reefs. “Coral reefs occupy only less than one percent of the ocean surface, but they are key to the survival of a quarter of the marine species. Corals have a mucous membrane, which gives them bright colours and protects them from diseases. Due to extreme temperatures, this membrane peels off and exposes the skeleton of the corals, and they can get killed. This is already happening in the Indian Ocean,” said Koll.

According to Rajeevan, there is a need to develop a good strategy for mitigating the risks of storm surges and heavy rains, coastal flooding, and coastal erosion. “We need to improve our early warning systems and bring in many societal developments. Even if there is a warming, people don’t move out because they are afraid of losing their life-long earnings. A disaster management system, even though well advanced with the latest technology, will not serve the purpose if we do not take care of human or societal dimensions.”

This article was originally published on Mongabay.

In World’s Biggest Early Childcare Scheme, Workers Don’t Even Get Minimum Wage

Karnataka increased the monthly salaries of anganwadi workers to Rs 10,000 last year but the ministry of women and child development has approved only Rs 4,500 – both lower than the workers’ demand.

Mysuru, Tumakuru and Ballari, Karnataka: The mud-and-bamboo anganwadi is about three kilometres from her house, deep inside the Nagarhole National Park and Tiger Reserve in Mysuru district, Karnataka. But little keeps Sita B., a young Yerwa tribe woman, from walking the distance every day to the Manamelkudi village anganwadi, where she works as worker and helper.

On the way, she picks up fresh vegetables and eggs to serve 14 children of the Jenu Kuruba tribe, aged three to six years, registered with the anganwadi. There are nine more children aged six months to three years, and Sita gives them their monthly share of take-home rations under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme of the Government of India.

ICDS is the world’s largest programme for early childhood care and development, with over 158 million children (2011 Census) in the 0-6 years age group, and pregnant and lactating mothers in the country. It offers six services: supplementary nutrition, preschool non-formal education, nutrition and health education, immunisation, health check-up and referral services, through 1.36 million functional anganwadi centres spread across all the districts in the country (as of June 2018).

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Sita attends to a child in her care. Photo: Nidhi Jamwal

According to the Union health ministry’s Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey 2016-2018, 32.5% of children younger than five years in Karnataka are stunted (lower height for age) and 12.4% are severely stunted. Over 32% are underweight (lower weight for age) and 19.3% are wasted (lower weight for height). A little over 34% of children aged one to four years also have anaemia.

The national scenario isn’t better. The same survey found that 35%, 33% and 17% of children under five in the country are stunted, underweight and wasted, respectively. About 11% of children aged six to 59 months months were in fact found to be acutely malnourished.

The Karnataka state department of women and child development has launched multiple schemes to fight malnutrition and is implementing them through anganwadi centres. For example, under the Ksheera Bhagya scheme, children aged six months to six years receive 150 ml of cream milk five days a week, supplied by the state government at a cost of Rs 124.14 crore per annum.

As part of the Srusti programme, children aged three to six years at anganwadi centres are provided eggs twice a week. Severely malnourished children aged six months to three years are provided eggs three days a week, whereas severely malnourished children aged three years to six years are offered eggs five days a week.

Apart from its 50% share under the ICDS, the Karnataka government gives Rs 11.50 per pregnant and lactating woman under Mathrupoorna, a scheme that grants nutritious meals, counselling and other healthcare facilities to pregnant and lactating women at anganwadi centres for six days a week.

Families with children who have severe acute malnutrition receive Rs 2,000 in medical benefits, plus Rs 1,000 a year for medicine kits at each anganwadi centre in the state.

The data suggests all these schemes together have had appreciable effect. For instance, 36.2% of children under five in Karnataka were stunted according to the 2015-2016 National Family Health Survey and 32.5% in the 2016-2018 survey. Similarly, wasting in children younger than five years has dropped from 26.1% in 2015-2016 to 19.3% in 2016-2018, and the fraction of underweight children has dropped from 35.2% to 32%.

These achievements also highlight the centrality of anganwadi centres – and the women who work there – to the state’s ambitions regarding the health and care of its most vulnerable people.

The ICDS population norms specify one centre for a population of 800 and a mini-anganwadi for a population of 150 to 300. According to the state department of women and child development, Karnataka has 65,911 anganwadi centres: 62,580 are main and 3,331 are mini-centres.

These centres are staffed by frontline health staff: one anganwadi worker and one anganwadi helper each, both typically women. Thus, Karnataka has 65,911 anganwadi workers and 62,580 anganwadi helpers. All the anganwadis together cater to the needs of 3.86 million children between the ages of six months to six years.

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Two anganwadis of Balle village, a Jenu Kuruba village located inside the Nagarhole National Park, operate out of a tin shed. Photo: Nidhi Jamwal

The tribal village of Manamelkudi is home to 42 Jenu Kuruba tribe families and has a mini-anganwadi centre, where Sita works as worker and helper both.

“I have been working at the Manamelkudi anganwadi for the last five years and am used to walking three kilometres to the centre [every day]. Sometimes I feel scared of tiger or elephant attacks, which are common in [the] forest area,” Sita told The Wire. She receives a monthly honorarium of Rs 4,750.

Managing children, their daily meals, preschool lessons, health and hygiene, and counselling pregnant and lactating mothers isn’t easy because she has to do it all alone. (Per ICDS norms, there can be only one worker-cum-helper per mini-anganwadi.)

However, Sita has been able to make sure the children in her anganwadi eat their meals hot, cooked freshly by her, and drink clean water. She also regularly monitors their growth and records the information in their respective growth charts. Unfortunately, the Manamelkudi anganwadi does not have a toilet.

Not very far away lies Balle, another Jenu Kuruba tribal village lying inside the Nagarhole National Park. It has two anganwadi centres and both function from the same tin-shed structure, without a toilet.

“Our anganwadis [have been] operating since 2010, when they were located inside a government school building,” Pushpa, one of the anganwadi workers. “A few years ago, the school building collapsed but the forest department didn’t permit new construction, so we are functioning out of a tin-shed structure.”

Sharda, the other worker, said the forest department had recently okayed a new anganwadi building and that it was expected to come up soon.

There are about 14 anganwadi centres functioning inside the boundaries of the Nagarhole forest. This isn’t easy. There is a constant threat of animal attack, and the anganwadi workers and helpers come from houses located far away. It is difficult to find educated local tribal women to work at an anganwadi because a worker has to be college-educated and an anganwadi helper has to have studied till at least class IV.

It is women like Sita, Sharda, Pushpa and thousands more who form the backbone of the ICDS scheme.

As it happens, they are not happy.

“We have been demanding the legal minimum wage from the government but the Central government has been deaf to our demands,” S. Varalakshmi, president of the Karnataka State Anganwadi Workers’ Association, told The Wire. “It is not ready to compensate us adequately for the labour and the number of hours we put in.”

In April 2017, Karnataka raised the honoraria for anganwadi workers and helpers from Rs 4,000 and Rs 3,000 a month to Rs 8,000 and Rs 4,000 a month, respectively. The state government also reimburses their medical expenses to the tune of Rs 50,000 a year and provides pension. Additionally, the state department of women and child development has supplied twin-burner stoves, LPG cylinders and water filters to all anganwadi centres in the state.

Last October, the state government decided to further increase the monthly salaries of anganwadi workers and helpers to Rs 10,000 and Rs 5,000, respectively, and of mini-anganwadi to about Rs 6,500. “The state government has sanctioned higher honoraria but the same have not been implemented thus far due to some technical glitches,” Varalakshmi said. “It is expected to be fixed soon.”

However, the Union ministry of women and child development has approved a much lower salary amount. In September 2018, it issued a circular on “enhancement of honorarium” of anganwadi workers from Rs 3,000 per month to Rs 4,500 per month. The pay for anganwadi helpers was raised from Rs 1,500 per month to Rs 2,250 per month. For mini-anganwadi worker-cum-helper, the ministry approved just Rs 3,500 per month.

Varalakshmi alleged the Centre was trying to push the entire burden onto the states. “Earlier, the honorarium for anganwadi workers and helpers was shared between Centre and the states in the ratio of 90:10. Now, the Centre has revised it to 60:40,” she said. According to her, anganwadi workers should get at least Rs 18,000 per month and helpers Rs 9,000 per month. Kerala is the only state that provides minimum wages to all workers. The Goa government offers a monthly salary of about Rs 13,000, and both Haryana and Andhra Pradesh give Rs 11,000 per month.

Is this enough?

Anganwadi workers and helpers in various states, including Karnataka, have been demanding a raise. Last December, anganwadi workers across Karnataka launched a protest against the state government’s decision to start pre-primary classes in government schools. There were protests in Belagavi for delays in the release of incentives for anganwadi workers and helpers.

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Anganwadi workers and helpers form the backbone of India’s ICDS scheme, and have been demanding minimim wages for their labour. Photo: Nidhi Jamwal

The Karnataka government has a ‘convergence’ programme as part of which it uses funds allocated for the fulfilment of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to build anganwadi centres in the state.

For example, the anganwadi in Somlara village of Tumakuru district is 14 years old. For the first 12, it operated out of a rented space against a payment of Rs 700 per month. Two years ago, the government erected a new anganwadi building with Rs 6 lakh from MGNREGA funds.

“One of the villagers donated four gunthe of land to construct the anganwadi. Children love the new anganwadi and parents are also happy sending them here,” T.K. Bhagyamma, the anganwadi worker at Somlara, told The Wire.

At Giriyammanapalya village in Madhugiri, Reshma has been managing an anganwadi centre since 2007. “Until April 2018, I was running the anganwadi from a rented place. In May 2018, a new anganwadi building was constructed with MGNREGA fund,” she said.

Indeed, these new buildings are swanky and spacious, with separate kitchens and tiled toilets. Many of them have attached gardens as well, and vegetables grown there are used to prepare meals for the children.

Srikanth, deputy director of the department of women and child development for Tumakuru, said, “We follow a 60:40 ratio – 60% fund is the wage component and 40% is for building materials. The wage component is [obtained] from MGNREGA and the rest … is shared with the Union ministry of women and child development and the state department.”

Thus Tumakuru alone has built 450 anganwadi centres using MGNREGA funds – the highest in the state.

Data from the state department of women and child development suggests a large number of anganwadi centres still continue to function out of rented spaces, such as schools, community halls, etc., but the state expects to cover them under the convergence scheme in a phased manner.

Anganwadi buildings in Karnataka. Source: http://dwcd.kar.nic.in:8080/icds.jsp

But while the government has been modernising anganwadis and introducing new programmes, the workers say their demand for better pay remains unaddressed.

“The labour of women is never seen as labour, but viewed as a service,” Sylvia Karpagam, a public health doctor and researcher and a member of the ‘Right to Food’ campaign in Karnataka, told The Wire. “The language used in the context of their work is ‘honorarium’ and not ‘salary’. This discrimination has to go and they should be treated as employees and not workers or helpers.”

Sundaramma has for the last decade been working as an anganwadi helper at Yerahalli village in H.D. Kote block, Mysuru. A short distance away, at the second anganwadi centre in Yerahalli, Nagaveni has been working as a helper for 17 years. Ask them if they’re satisfied with their salaries and they go quiet.

Gayathri, an anganwadi supervisor in H.D. Kote block, said she oversees a hundred anganwadi centres; Chandibai, a supervisor in Madhugiri block of Tumakuru, said she oversees 68 centres. The norm however is only 25 centres per supervisor.

In February 2019, anganwadi workers marched to the Parliament in Delhi to protest against the Centre’s reluctance to increase their pay and pension. In October the same year, anganwadi workers and helpers in Jharkhand protested demanding higher salaries.

In a country with such high malnutrition, it’s important to acknowledge the crucial role these women play as frontline health workers. Without them and their labour, the world’s largest programme to ensure good quality early childhood care and development would flop.

Nidhi Jamwal is the environment editor of Gaon Connection, India’s largest rural media platform.

Giant Citizen Science Exercise Gives India First Sweeping View of Its Birds

The new report was a product of an extensive exercise undertaken by 10 research institutions and more than 15,500 birders across India.

Kushal Tharpu, a young resident of LunchaKameru village in Sumbuk block in South Sikkim, wakes up early and heads to the village farmlands carrying a sack of grains, accompanying by a bunch of fellow villagers. On a barren patch of hill land, they spread the grains out and call out for peafowls. They show up quickly enough, and begin feasting on the grains.

Tharpu’s and his companions’ reasons for this daily activity is neither religious nor ecological. It’s their desperate attempt to make sure hungry peafowls don’t ravage their rice and corn fields instead.

“A couple decades back, we didn’t have any peafowls in our area. Now, they are all over the place and have become a menace,” Tharpu told The Wire. “They eat up our rice and corn crops, so we offer them grains. Several farmers have abandoned farming because of heavy crop losses due to peafowls.”

Sikkim’s LunchaKameru isn’t the only place struggling with a higher population of peafowls and its consequences.

A new and unique nationwide assessment of 867 birds species in India recently reported an increasing trend in both peafowl range expansion and its population in the country.

“Some parts of the country report greater levels of crop damage by peafowl – a trend that calls for careful conflict assessment and management,” the report, entitled ‘State of India’s Birds 2020: Range, trends and conservation status‘, reads. Researchers released it during the 13th UN Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Migratory Species, underway in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. It was the product of an extensive exercise undertaken by ten research institutions and more than 15,500 birders across India.

“This is the first time such [a] national-level scientific exercise to determine both long-term and current annual bird species trends [for 867 species] in the country has been carried out,” Ashwin Viswanathan, a research associate with the Nature Conservation Foundation, one of the 10 institutes involved, told The Wire.

M.D. Madhusudan, a conservation scientist who was also involved with preparing the report, said, “India has a total of 1,333 birds species, of which, this study assessed 867 species based on over 10 million records provided by thousands of birders.”

“It was possible to determine long-term trends, which required reliable data over a 25-year period, for 261 birds species. Since 2000, 52% of these species have registered a decline, with 22% declining strongly,” he added.

To calculate the prevailing annual trends – i.e. over the last five years – the researchers had reliable data only for 146 species. “Of these, nearly 80% are declining, with almost 50% declining strongly. Just over 6% are stable and 14% are increasing,” the report reads.

Clearly, many species of birds that the report has assessed have registered stronger declines. That said, “it is remarkable that despite the availability of over 10 million records from across the country, there is still a data deficit that does not allow us to reliably describe population trends for hundreds of birds species,” Madhusudan said.

For example, the report could study only 65% of the 1,333 birds species reported from India. Of those, it had long-term data (25+ years) for fewer than a third. In the case of current annual trends, i.e. over the last five years, reliable data was available for just 16.8% of the birds species assessed.

“Data deficit is a concern but this report has made a good beginning and in the coming years, we should have more robust data on birds species trends in the country,” Viswanathan said.

Indeed, the report is already being celebrated for its use of citizen science to overcome the data problem.

Birdwatchers have a long-standing practice of noting down the species of birds they spot while out birding. They used to do this in notebooks but of late smartphone apps have replaced them as the logbook of choice.

eBird-India is one such app that maintains birds species data. As part of the recent exercise, this app was used to digitise information provided by 15,500 birdwatchers from the 1960s to 2020, and analysed to reveal the trends.

The final assessment was based on three indices. Two were indices of change in abundance: long-term trend (25+ years) and current annual trend (over the last five years). The third index measured range size.

Also read: There Are More Peafowls in Kerala. Is It Because of Climate Change?

Using these indices together with the IUCN Red List, the researchers classified each species into different categories of conservation concern. Thus, India has 101 species of ‘high concern’, 319 species of ‘moderate concern’ and 442 species of ‘low concern’.

Species of ‘high concern’ include those whose numbers have declined considerably in the long term and continue to decline today. Birds also found themselves in the ‘high concern’ bin if their current range has become very restricted or if their abundance trend couldn’t be assessed while they’re listed as globally threatened in the Red List.

All together, this is how the researchers have been able to zero in on some good news and lots of bad news.

The good news first: The populations of the house sparrow, the Asian koel, the rose-ringed parakeet and the common tailorbird are stable or increasing. (Indeed, of the total 867 species assessed, 14.5% are either stable or increasing.)

The bad news: The populations of raptors, waterbirds and habitat specialists across India, as well as birds endemic to the Western Ghats, are falling.

“The report only indicates trends and does not investigate reasons or determinants for decline,” Neha Sinha, a policy officer with the Bombay Natural History Society, one of the 10 institutes (and The Wire Science‘s contributing environment editor), said. “But if we are to speculate, raptors may be affected by chemicals and slow poisoning. Shorebirds could be impacted by both habitat loss as well as warming in their breeding grounds.”

“With the exception of vultures,” Madhusudan said, “we haven’t known much about raptor population trends in the country. A series of careful scientific studies on vultures over the last two decades have showed that their populations had declined precipitously due to poisoning from diclofenac, a common veterinary drug that was often found in carcasses. Thereafter the sale of this drug was banned.”

The report also found that the populations of migratory species, both long-distance and intra-subcontinent, were shrinking faster than those of resident species.

As for the Western Ghats’ birds: “The 12 Western Ghats endemics included in this analysis are almost 75% lower in their abundance index today than before 2000, indicating a steep long-term decline,” the report reads.

On the flip side, now that we know which bird species are in how much trouble, we have no excuses to not act.

Also read: One in Eight Bird Species Are Found in India – But Do We Really Care?

The primary threats to birds around the world include are habitat change, mainly from agricultural expansion and intensification, logging and increased urbanisation; invasive species and hunting/trapping. Lesser but still significant threats include dams and mining, linear infrastructure (roads, railways and power lines) and pollution. Climate change acts on top of these factors and exacerbates their effects.

“We all need to come together to [study] the reasons for the decline and take suitable action,” Vishwanathan said. “We need to focus on habitats like grasslands that have been long ignored. There are a large number of habitats for which we have no scientific information.”

Sinha also said there’s a need to update the IUCN Red List because species like the large cuckooshrike have steeply declined but are listed as being of ‘least concern’ on the list.

Nidhi Jamwal is the environment editor of Gaon Connection, India’s largest rural media platform.

Maharashtra’s Climate Action Plan Comes up Short

Despite taking almost a decade to prepare a state action plan for climate change, the Maharashtra government has missed out on including issues related to thunderstorms, lightning and air pollution.

Eight years after the Central government’s direction to formulate a state action plan on climate change, and seven years after awarding the contract for a comprehensive vulnerability assessment study, Maharashtra’s cabinet of ministers has finally adopted the state adaptation plan on climate change.

Titled Assessing Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation Strategies for Maharashtra: Maharashtra State Action Plan on Climate Change (MSAAPC), and prepared by the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the action plan assesses vulnerability of the state to the changing climate and outlines broad and ambitious strategies for building a climate resilient future.

The action plan is built on a high resolution climate change modelling for which the consultant, TERI, entered into a partnership with the UK Met Office to assist in the development of climate projections for the state as a unit. Using a high resolution model, the adaptation plan projects changes in temperature and rainfall across the state at a resolution of about 25 km by 25 km for time periods 2030s, 2050s and 2070s with the average climate during 1970-2000 as the model’s baseline.

An important component of the action plan is the Macro Level Vulnerability Index (MLVI) based on 19 indicators, which has identified the most vulnerable districts in Maharashtra. As per this vulnerability index, Nandurbar is the most climate change vulnerable district, followed by Dhule and Buldhana districts. On the other hand, Satara is regarded as the least vulnerable district. Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts are also considered less vulnerable to changes in the climate. The state government has announced setting up a panel of experts to oversee the implementation of the report.

Experts dissatisfied

But, meteorologists and environment experts aren’t satisfied with the state action plan. “The state has taken considerable time to come up with its adaptation plan on climate change. But, the plan misses out on some crucial weather events, such as thunderstorm and lightning that are linked to climatic changes. Air pollution, an important environment factor, is also missing from the plan,” Akshay Deoras, Nagpur-based independent meteorologist, said.

“Moreover, any climate modelling study that projects temperature rise or changes in rainfall, must quantify errors as that adds to the validity of the report. But, the error margins are missing in the state action plan,” added Deoras.

Also Read: How the Climate Justice Movement in South Asia Took a Big Step Forward Last Week

Ashok Jaswal, former scientist with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) Pune, stresses that an effective state action plan should include all direct and indirect climatic parameters. “Air pollutants are aerosols and have their own different properties. Some are salt-based, whereas others are carbon-based, or dust, or smoke. Some reflect solar radiation, whereas others trap heat,” he told indiaclimatedialogue.net. “These aerosols influence cloud formation, rainfall and the overall climate, and must be a part of the state action plan on climate change.”

Mounting crop losses

Broadly speaking, the state action plan discusses the impacts of climate change on six sectors — agriculture, water resources, health, forests and biodiversity, livelihoods, and energy and infrastructure. It also makes model-based projections for rainfall and temperature in the state; and assesses the future sea-level rise. A section in the plan is dedicated to extreme rainfall, flooding and adaptation in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR).

The climate modelling results, as documented in the state action plan, show that temperature and rainfall are projected to increase all over the state with some regional variations. Amravati division (Vidarbha region) and Aurangabad division (Marathwada region) are going to experience greater rise in annual mean temperatures than other parts of the state. The projected increase in annual mean temperature for Amravati division is expected to be 1.44-1.64 degree C, 2.2-2.35 degree C, and 3.06-3.46 degree C in 2030s, 2050s and 2070s, respectively. For the same time periods, the projected annual mean temperature increase for Aurangabad division is 1.44-1.56 degree C, 2.15-2.3 degree C, and 3.14-3.38 degree C, respectively.

Manjara Dam in Latur. Photo: PTI

Apart from an increase in mean temperature, the action plan has also projected a rise in minimum temperature in the state. The minimum temperature is projected to increase particularly in the three divisions of Konkan, Pune and Nashik, which could have an adverse impact on crops sensitive to high night temperatures in the reproductive phase, such as grain growth in rice or tuberisation in potatoes, warns the state action plan.

Heat stress

Konkan and Nashik divisions are expected to have an increase in heat index (calculated by combining projections for air temperature and relative humidity to indicate human comfort levels), which will lead to heat stress. The action plan notes that an increase in temperature will be conducive to malaria-transmitting mosquitoes in eastern and coastal (Thane and Raigad regions) Maharashtra in 2030s. By the 2050s, a faster rate of parasite development will take place in Aurangabad, Jalna and Nashik districts.

An increase in temperature is likely to lead to a decrease in yields for some crops, such as rice, sorghum and cotton. A 1 degree C to 2.3 degree C rise in temperature results in 6.3% to 17.5% decline in sorghum yield in semi-arid conditions, respectively. Similarly, a 1 degree C to 4 degree C temperature increase results in reduction in soybean yield of 11% to 36%, respectively. A temperature rise of 1.85 degree C may result in no significant change in cotton yield in central India, reports the action plan, but a temperature rise of 3.2 degree C can lead to a 268 kg per ha decline in cotton yield.

Since a warmer atmosphere has a higher capacity to hold water vapour, it will lead to intense rainfall events with longer dry or low rainfall spells in between. Extreme rainfall is projected to increase in all regions of the state with greater increases in the northern parts of the state, particularly in Aurangabad and northern regions of the Nashik division. By the 2030s, Amravati division is expected to have 17.5-30 percent more rainfall, which will further increase to 22.5-32.5% by the 2050s.

Meanwhile, parts of south central Maharashtra (Ahmednagar, Solapur, Beed, Latur, Osmanabad, etc.) are projected to experience more dry days in the 2030s as compared to the baseline. These districts of Marathwada are already prone to recurring droughts and infamous for farmers’ suicides.

“The findings of the state action plan are important because they clearly describe the adverse impacts of climate change on all the regions of the state. The report shows the worrying trend of an increase in extreme weather events and heavy precipitation days in Maharashtra,” Parineeta Dandekar, associate co-ordinator of the South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), told indiaclimatedialogue.net. “Increased rainfall will lead to heavy flooding, which will have a direct bearing on the state’s water infrastructure. But, the action plan fails to elaborate upon ways to manage the water infrastructure in times of climate change.”

A pond in Maharashtra in 1972. Credit: Nidhi Jamwal

Lightning missing from action plan

Lightning is listed as a state-specific disaster in Maharashtra, but the state action plan makes no mention of lightning, which is linked to climatic changes. “Rising temperature means more evaporation and high moisture content in the atmosphere, which leads to more thunderstorm activity and an increased incidence of lightning,” explained Jaswal.

A recent study, Distribution of Lightning Casualties over Maharashtra, India, has studied lightning deaths in the state between 1979 and 2011 and found 2,363 casualties from 455 lighting events. On an average 72 casualties per year have been reported with significant increasing trend. “About 51% events and 46% casualties have occurred only in six districts of Nagpur, Chandrapur, Yavatmal, Nashik, Amravati and Akola. Remarkably, Vidarbha region has reported about 4 times more lightning events and about 3 times more casualties than second highest Marathwada region,” reads the September 2011 study published in the Journal of Indian Geophysical Union.

Another September 2015 study, Lightning Fatalities over India: 1979-2011, has reported Maharashtra as number one state in the country with lightning fatalities. Of the 5,259 people killed due to lightning in India between 1979 and 2011, 29% were from Maharashtra, followed by 12% from West Bengal and 9% from Uttar Pradesh.

New climate models have predicted a 50% increase in lightning strikes across the world during this century as a result of warming temperatures due to climate change. “It is shocking that in spite of so many lives being lost each year due to lightning, the state action plan does not even mention the terms thunderstorm and lightning. Unless the plan acknowledges these weather events, how will the state government manage such disasters?” questioned Deoras.

Also Read: Environment Ministry’s Cooling Action Plan Is a Good Start but Not Good Enough

Jaswal urges the state government to include thunderstorm in the state action plan because thunderstorm leads to cloudburst, which gives localised precipitation and causes heavy flooding, as happened during the Mumbai floods in July 2005.

The action plan does take note of the adverse impacts of hailstorm on horticulture crops in the state. For instance, it notes that the hailstorm destroyed grapes crop in 2008-09. In 2010, almost 15% of the orange crop was destroyed due to rising heat and untimely hailstorm. But, the action plan fails to provide pointed information on ways to deal with hailstorms and minimising their impacts on the crops.

Air pollution amiss

Apart from thunderstorm and lightning, the action plan also makes no mention of air pollution which is closely related to climate change. According to the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) Potsdam, Germany, many air pollutants that are harmful to human health and ecosystems also contribute to climate change by affecting the amount of incoming sunlight that is reflected or absorbed by the atmosphere, with some pollutants warming and others cooling the earth. These so-called short-lived climate-forcing pollutants (SLCPs) include methane, black carbon, ground-level ozone, and sulfate aerosols.

“Not including air pollution in the state climate action plan is a major drawback and the same must be rectified at the earliest,” Jaswal told indiaclimatedialogue.net. According to him, action plan is a vision document to guide the policy makers and must be comprehensive in all aspects.

Dandekar stresses on the need for translating action points listed in the state adaptation plan into swift action. “The recommendations should not remain only on paper, but must be included in the various state policies for immediate implementation,” she said. Deoras recommends setting up of a committee to reframe the action plan, by including the above-mentioned points, and then working towards the plan’s implementation by providing specific directions.

Nidhi Jamwal is an environment editor with Gaon Connection.

This article was first published on India Climate Dialogue.

Cyclone Fani Is a Sign That Tropical Storms Are Becoming More Intense

Fani, as the first of its kind in this decade, has illustrated our need for climate-resilient infrastructure, including better housing and public supply systems. Its successors will put them to the test.

In early May, when the media was busy with covering the Lok Sabha elections, a severe cyclonic storm named Fani struck the city of Puri in Odisha, leaving behind a trail devastation. Fast winds uprooted trees, mangled power transmission lines and destroyed bastis; fishing boats went missing and many lost their nets, crops and infrastructure. Puri had never faced anything like this before.

Both the national and the international media lauded the state government and the India Meteorological Department (IMD), whose timely and accurate cyclone forecast helped evacuate lakhs of people. However, when it comes to cyclones, their making landfall is not the only time they are destructive. According to Bishnupada Sethi, Odisha’ special relief commissioner, Fani caused damaged Odisha to the tune of Rs 100,000 crore.

Take the case of the Penthakota urban slum in Puri, which houses over 1,500 Telugu-speaking marine fisher families. Since the slum is right on the coast, its residents bore Fani’s destructive brunt. Imagine: the storm struck Puri on the morning of May 3 with winds blowing at nearly 200 km/hr.

All the fishers lost their boats and fishing nets. A majority of the houses were rendered roofless. Those with roofs made of mud and thatch simply collapsed. Even though these fishers have been living on the coast for many decades, and Odisha is no stranger to cyclones, they claim they have never faced a storm like Fani before, whose winds they say turned them “deaf”.

Just across the road, all the hutments in Harchandi basti have collapsed as well, and its residents forced to live out in the open. They allege that government agencies were slow to bring aid and that they were forced to go hungry for two days. It was only after that people setup community kitchens to feed cyclone-affected families.

Community kitchens set up by non-profit organisations fed people for days as Fani's winds had blown everything away. Photo: Nidhi Jamwal

Community kitchens set up by non-profit organisations fed people for days as Fani’s winds had blown everything away. Photo: Nidhi Jamwal

The destruction caused by Fani was also evident in Bahrampur, an island village inside Chilika, Asia’s largest brackish water lake spread over 1,100 sq. km. Like Penthakota, according to Gaon Connection, Bahrampur’s 1,500 fisher families lost the sources of their livelihood. These families now depend on fishing in Chilika to eke out a living, and believe they will be able to return to pre-Fani status quo in nothing less than two or three years.

Apart from the loss of houses, boats and nets, all hand-pumps in the region – which supply drinking water – have turned saline, and the people are consuming it as well for lack of alternatives. Many women complained of rashes on the skin and of children acquiring stomach infections as a result.

Fani also hit coastal farmers hard, especially the numerous small and marginal farmers who depend on cashew cultivation. Among India’s states, Odisha is the third-largest producer of cashew nuts: about 100,000-125,000 metric tonnes per year (raw), which is over 13% of the country’s total production.

In the village of Rameshwarpatna, about 10 km from Puri, Fani uprooted all cashew plantations. Each farmer here claims to have suffered losses worth about Rs 70,000-80,000. A women’s self-help group (SHG) called Narayani had invested Rs 50,000 earlier this year and taken up a cashew plantation on lease. Thanks to Fani, they lost a hundred trees and the SHG lost all its money.

All of these also said that they had never experienced anything like Fani’s winds before.

According to M. Rajeevan, the secretary of the Union ministry of earth sciences, 14 severe tropical cyclones formed in the Bay of Bengal in the Aprils of 1891-2017. Of these, only one crossed over mainland India; Fani was only the second one to have done so. He added that it was rare for a tropical cyclone to take shape in April.

Fani blew everything down. Photo: Nidhi Jamwal

Fani blew everything down. Photo: Nidhi Jamwal

In April this year, Fani formed very close to the equator, moved across a (relatively) large distance and had a long life cycle. All of this is unusual, and experts suspect the changing climate might have had a hand in this. While tropical cyclones may not become more frequent, there is a good chance for a low-pressure system to worsen into a storm because the surface of the oceans is becoming warmer, Rajeevan said.

Further, in spite of its protracted journey over the Bay of Bengal, it did not weaken but only became more intense because of the warmer waters underneath it. The more heat there is below a tropical cyclone, the stronger it becomes, so Fani’s unprecedented strength is a sign that the Bay of Bengal is becoming warmer. This in turn increases the chances of there being more such storms in the future.

In a 2010 study, the National Institute of Oceanography, Visakhapatnam, reported – based on tracking 13 cyclones using data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – that upper-ocean heat-content plays an important role in intensifying cyclones. A bit of correspondence published in the journal Current Science in May 2001 reads:

It is almost certain that an increase in [sea surface temperature] will be accompanied by a corresponding increase in cyclone intensity (wind speed) … while it is not yet certain that tropical cyclone frequency may change, the available data strongly suggest that an increase in its intensity is most probable.

So it is imperative that we improve our disaster preparedness, response and management systems. Fani, as the first of its kind in this decade, has illustrated our need for climate-resilient infrastructure, including better housing and public supply systems. Its successors will put them to the test.

Nidhi Jamwal is an environment editor with Gaon Connection.

Not Just Chennai, India’s Drought Situation Is Far Worse Than We Realise

By the end of the last monsoon, it was clear that almost half the country would be heading towards a drought.

The Chennai water crisis has suddenly spluttered all over television channels and media reports. ‘A city gone dry’, ‘man-made crisis’, ‘21 cities to run out of groundwater’, ‘no drips, no drops’, and ‘self-inflicted water scarcity’, cry out the news headlines. So much so that Leonardo DiCaprio, the Hollywood actor, recently took to Instagram to highlight the acute water shortage in the southern city. 

There is no doubt that Chennai is facing a water crisis. However, there were clear signals of drought-like conditions not just in Chennai but across south India as early as the beginning of this year, and the same was reported by The Wire. 

On January 16, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) released a ‘Statement on Climate in India during 2018’, which pointed out that rainfall during the last northeast monsoon season, between October and December, over the country had been “substantially below normal” – only 56% of the long-term average. And this, it said, was the sixth lowest since 1901.  

The Met office had further noted that except for Kerala, all the other four meteorological subdivisions in the southern peninsula — coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, and south interior Karnataka — had received deficient rainfall. 

Because of drought, farmers and cattle herders in Karnataka are now facing fodder shortage. Photo: Nidhi Jamwal

Because of drought, farmers and cattle herders in Karnataka are now facing fodder shortage. Photo: Nidhi Jamwal

Early this year, three of the four reservoirs supplying water to Chennai had gone dry and water cuts had been introduced. It is claimed that now all the four reservoirs – Chembarambakkam, Poondi, Red Hills and Cholavaram – are “almost empty”. 

Even though the southwest monsoon is slowly picking up pace to cover large parts of the country, water woes in Chennai, and some other parts of south India may remain a matter of concern because these regions receive a major chunk of their annual rainfall from the northeast monsoon (October to December) and not the southwest monsoon (June to September).

Also read: Digging For Water in Tamil Nadu

For instance, Tamil Nadu and the Union territory of Puducherry, which together form one meteorological sub-division, receive almost 50% of their annual rainfall during the northeast monsoon season, which is still three months away.  

But even if we were to look beyond Chennai, the water scenario is anything but comfortable across the country. As per the South Asia Drought Monitor, maintained by the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhi Nagar (IITG), at present, more than 44% area of the country is facing drought-like conditions, of which over 17% is facing ‘severe dry’ conditions (see map). Several of these areas are facing successive droughts and may not recover even after a ‘normal’ monsoon this year. 

Source: South Asia Drought Monitor

Last year, both northeast monsoon and southwest monsoon rains were ‘below normal’, which is why drought conditions are now being seen in large parts of the country.

The drought conditions were further aggravated when this year’s pre-monsoon season, March to May, registered a cumulative rainfall departure of minus 24% (see graph).

Pre-monsoon rainfall between March and May in 2019. Source: India Meteorological Department.

Pre-monsoon rainfall between March and May in 2019. Source: India Meteorological Department.

Against the normal onset date of June 1, the southwest monsoon arrived over Kerala on June 8 this year. Thereafter, the progress of monsoon has been slow. It hit Mumbai only on June 25, the most delayed it has been in the last 45 years. 

As of June 26, of the total 36 meteorological subdivisions in the country, 31 are in ‘deficient’ and ‘large deficient’ rainfall category. So far, there is a deficit of minus 36% rainfall in this southwest monsoon season. 

According to the Central Water Commission, which monitors the water storage status of 91 reservoirs in the country, live storage available in these reservoirs is 27.265 billion cubic metre, which is 17% of total live storage capacity of these reservoirs. Last year, this figure was 29.699 billon cubic metre.

Farmers in drought-hit states are on their tenterhooks, as kharif sowing has been delayed. But this drought has not come out of the blue. Take the case of Maharashtra, where in October 2018 itself the state government had declared drought in several talukas. Officially, 28,524 villages in 151 talukas of the state are declared drought-hit. Maharashtra has a total of 358 talukas, hence more than 42% of the state is drought-affected. 

As of June 26, Maharashtra has only 5.96% water in all its dams. The situation is the worst in the Aurangabad division – the especially drought-prone Marathwada region is in this division – which has only 0.47% water left. Of the nine major dam projects in Aurangabad division, eight are dry. 

A traditional tank on the outskirts of Bengaluru being desilted to capture rainwater and help recharge groundwater. Photo: Nidhi Jamwal

A traditional tank on the outskirts of Bengaluru being desilted to capture rainwater and help recharge groundwater. Photo: Nidhi Jamwal

Karnataka is also facing an unprecedented situation. It has declared drought in 100 talukas spread across 24 districts. The state faces an estimated loss of Rs 16,500 crore.

Last November, Jharkhand government had declared 126 blocks in 18 districts as drought-hit and sought a relief package of Rs 8.16 billion from the Centre. Jharkhand has a total of 260 blocks in its 24 districts. Thus, half the state is in the grip of an acute drought. 

A month later, in December, Gujarat government also declared 3,367 villages under 51 talukas of its 16 districts as drought-hit. 

Other states such as Bihar and Andhra Pradesh have declared drought, too. 

Early this year, the Centre released Rs 6,680 crore as drought relief to four states —Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. Of these, Maharashtra received the lion’s share of Rs 4,700 crore followed by Karnataka which received Rs 950 crore. Andhra Pradesh got Rs 900 crore and Gujarat, 130 crore.

Development in groundwater withdrawal in selected countries.

Development in groundwater withdrawal in selected countries.

Experts point out that the drought has turned acute not only because of poor monsoon rainfall last year, but also due to mindless extraction and mismanagement of groundwater. Villagers in drought-hit Marathwada narrate how even during the worst drought 0f the early 1970s, the situation was not this critical because even if no water fell from the sky, there would plenty of water under the ground.

Now, there are pockets in Marathwada where no groundwater can be found even at depths of 1,000 feet. Several villages have turned into ‘ghost villages’. People have locked their houses and migrated due to lack of water. 

In spite of the wide spatial spread of acute drought across the states, the situation has not received the kind of attention it deserved from as early as the end of the last southwest monsoon.

By the end of the last northeast monsoon season, it was clear that almost half the country would be heading towards a drought. Management of existing water sources could have averted the present water crisis.

Also read: We Parched the Country to Quench the City, and Chennai Still Cries for Help

All eyes are now set on the southwest monsoon, which is delayed and is slowly picking up pace. In its second long range forecast issued on May 31, the IMD had forecast a ‘normal’ monsoon rainfall of 96% of the long period average (LPA) over the country as a whole with a model error of plus or minus 4%. 

The LPA is the weighted average of rainfall that India has received in the southwest monsoon season (June to September) from 1951 to 2000, and is pegged at 89 cm.

The southwest monsoon season is almost a month in and the country already has a rainfall deficit of minus 36%. Even if the monsoon now picks up pace, farming in the southern peninsula are expected to be affected due to delayed sowing, as a large number of them are dependent on this rainfall for farming. 

Last year’s below normal southwest monsoon rainfall, followed by deficient northeast monsoon rainfall, and this year’s drought situation across half the country is a brutal reminder that both the government and the people must work together and conserve every drop of rain that the two monsoons shower on our lands every year.

Nidhi Jamwal is environment editor with Gaon Connection.

Why Andhra Pradesh’s Fishers Are on the Verge of Becoming Refugees

Fish catch has plummeted, the sea has been coming further inward and dams are eroding their land. There is nowhere left to go.

Visakhapatnam: With folded hands, 22-year-old Satya bows in front of a young tree on a sandy beach in Mangamarepeta, a fishing village in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. In the distance, fishing boats are anchored on the beach and heaps of nets dry in the open.

After praying to the tree – which is Satya’s family deity – she narrates the horror of Cyclone Hudhud, which struck her village of 4,500 fisher families in October 2014. “My house was right here on the beach next to the family deity. Although I am a fisher, I had never seen such a ferocious sea, whose hungry waves swept away my house and the tree. I have replanted the deity.”

She takes a moment to remind herself of her good fortune: her husband, a fisherman, and two young children – a  9-year-old son and an 8-year-old daughter – escaped the disaster unhurt.

“Apart from my house, 24 houses of fishers were engulfed by the sea. We received a compensation of Rs 10,000 per lost house, but the cost of my house alone was over Rs 2.5 lakh,” Satya said.

Her family has since rented a house a little more away from the beach, for Rs 600 a month. The 24 other fisher families have moved to rented houses as well.

However, Mangamarepeta’s fishers are far from being content. The sea, their only source of livelihood and sustenance, has been coming further inwards every year, eating into the coastal lands.

Also read: As Mumbai’s Coastal Reclamation Begins, Artisan Fishers Fight for Their Livelihood

“We are facing a double whammy,” says U. Bharati. “On the one hand, the sea is threatening us by coming closer. On the other hand, the fish catch has declined sharply.

“In the next few years, several houses of fishers on the beach will be inside the sea, turning them into refugees.”

Satya is also worried about losing her family deity to the sea once again. “Both the tree and the place on the beach where it is planted are sacred to me. I may lose them both.”

Gain some, lose a lot

Mangamarepeta is one of 555 fishing villages along the Andhra Pradesh coastline. According to a 2016 paper, the state is home to 163,427 fisher families.

According to K. Nageswara Rao, professor emeritus at the department of geoengineering at Andhra University, coastal areas face both erosion and aggradation – the deposition of material.

“The evolution of east coast delta, between Krishna and Godavari rivers, shows that over 6,770 sq. km of delta was created in the last 6,000 years,” Rao recently said at a media workshop in the city. “And this delta progradation continued the till early 20th century.”

East coast delta progradation in 6,000 years. The dark portion beyond the dotted line shows the creation of delta land. Credit: K. Nageswara Rao

East coast delta progradation in 6,000 years. The dark portion beyond the dotted line shows the creation of delta land. Credit: K. Nageswara Rao

However, the coastlines keep changing due both to natural and human-made factors. Rao has recorded shoreline changes along the Andhra Pradesh coast between 1990 and 2008. He “found the state has lost 88 sq. km of coastline due to erosion and gained 40 sq. km by accretion.”

That brings the net area of coastal land lost to 48 sq. km, or 2.67 sq. km of along the shoreline a year.

This isn’t unique to India. A 2018 study reported that the planet lost about 14,000 sq. km of such land between 1985 and 2015 to human settlements and terrestrial ecosystems. India itself has lost 235 sq. km of its coastal area between 1990 and 2016 due to erosion. And between 1965 and 2017, Visakhapatnam lost 54 hectares of beach land along a 10-km stretch.

There are many causes of coastal erosion. One of them is the construction of a series of dams on rivers. The dams decrease the flow of water and trap sediments, and slowly sink the delta.

The threat multiplier

“In India, nearly 250 million people live within 50 km of the coastline,” R. Ramasubramanian, principal coordinator of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, told The Wire. “More than seven million coastal families of fishers and farmers are threatened due to climate-change-induced sea-level rise.”

Climate change has also caused, and will continue to cause, shoreline erosion, tides and currents and saltwater intrusion. “The Indian coast already experiences severe weather events, such as an average of nine cyclones a year,” he added.

A rising sea is pushing more saltwater inland, and several sources of drinking water in Mangamarepeta have turned saline. Now, the local administration supplies freshwater once or twice a week. The fisherwomen collect 20 pots of drinking water every day and carry them home. They also have to visit the market to sell their catch of fish. Credit: Nidhi Jamwal

A rising sea is pushing more saltwater inland, and several sources of drinking water in Mangamarepeta have turned saline. Now, the local administration supplies freshwater once or twice a week. The fisherwomen collect 20 pots of drinking water every day and carry them home. They also have to visit the market to sell their catch of fish. Credit: Nidhi Jamwal

S. Venkatesh, a fisheries livelihoods consultant in Kakinada, “Small-scale fishing communities are already facing several challenges, such as uncertain availability of fishery resources, marine pollution, high cost of operation, imperfect market and financial mechanisms, indebtedness.” They don’t need climate change but it’s here, and it threatens to doom their living.

For example, as the ocean’s surface warmed, the distribution boundary of oil sardine – a species of ray-finned fish – changed along India’s coastline between 1961 and 2006. Until about 1976, it was to be found only along the western coast, but by 1997, fishers began spotting it along the entire coastline.

“In Mangamarepeta and surrounding villages, fishers used to catch 24 species of fishes. But now they can barely find four species,” said Arijilli Dasu of the District Fishermen’s Youth Welfare Association, Visakhapatnam.

Pardesi Sarada, a fisher from Mangamarepeta, complains how from a daily fish catch of Rs 5,000, the earnings have dwindled to Rs 500 a day. “The cost of one fishing net alone is Rs 20,000 and needs to be replaced after three months,” Sarada complained.

Also read: A Sip of Sea Water

Satya said her husband used to bring in five or six baskets of fish daily a decade ago but can barely manage three today.

Fisher families have a clear division of labour. Whereas menfolk go to the sea for fishing, women carry the fish catch to market for selling.

“Large motorised boats come from the harbour and remain in the sea for 10-15 days and take away all our fish. Our menfolk have to go deeper into the sea to catch fish. Often, they return empty handed,” Bharati said.

I ask Satya if her children will take after their parents, and she is clear. “Never a fisher. Children should always do better than their parents. There is nothing left in small-scale fishing.”

Nidhi Jamwal is an independent journalist based in Mumbai.

Northeast Monsoon Flops, Triggering Drought-Like Conditions Across South India

Analysis of monsoon data suggests South India is headed for an acute water crisis this summer.

On January 16, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) released a ‘Statement on Climate in India during 2018’. Among other high impact weather events in 2018, the met department pointed out in it that rainfall during the northeast monsoon, between October and December, over the country had been “substantially below normal” – only 56% of the long-term average. And this, it said, was the sixth lowest since 1901.

The statement went on to note that seasonal rainfall over the southern peninsula, which includes five meteorological subdivisions (coastal Andhra, Rayalaseema, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, south interior Karnataka and Kerala), had also received below-average rainfall in the same months. In fact, except for Kerala, all the other four subdivisions had received deficient rainfall.

The long-term average of the northeast monsoon over the southern peninsula has been 332.1 mm for the base range 1951-2000.

Also read: A ‘Normal’ Monsoon With Droughts and Floods?

This is cause for worry because, unlike the rest of the country, which receives rain in the southwest monsoon season between June and September, the northeast monsoon is crucial for farming and water security in the south. This region now seems headed for an acute water crisis.

One analysis of northeast monsoon data, by a meteorology blog, showed the highest rainfall departure to be in Telangana, of negative 65%, followed by Andhra Pradesh at negative 57%, Karnataka at negative 48% and Tamil Nadu at minus 24%.

At the Chennai and Dharmapuri stations in Tamil Nadu, rainfall was 55% and 59% lower than the average. In Andhra Pradesh, Visakhapatnam, Guntur and Prakasam districts received 54%, 63% and 68% less rainfall. Bengaluru’s urban and rural areas, similarly, recorded 54% and 36% less rainfall. The least rainfall received relative to the long-term average appeared to be in Nalgonda, Nizamabad and Yadadri Bhuvanagiri districts in Telangana, at negative 91% in each.

In response, the state governments have introduced water cuts. Three reservoirs supplying water to the city of Chennai have reportedly gone dry and the level in another is falling fast. The Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board has already cut the city’s drinking water supply by almost half.

Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh has declared 347 mandals in nine districts to be drought-hit and drought relief of Rs 1,401 crore from the Centre. And it isn’t the only state staring at a drought year. The southwest monsoon, the country’s principal monsoon season, also ended on a ‘below normal’ note, triggering droughts in several states.

At least five other states apart from Andhra, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Gujarat, have submitted memoranda to the Centre for drought relief, and Bihar and Telangana are headed there.

“Deficit soil moisture is an important parameter of agricultural drought. It can be due to deficient rainfall and also high temperature that depletes soil moisture,” Vimal Mishra, an agricultural engineer at IIT Gandhinagar, told The Wire. The IMD, together with the Water and Climate Lab at Mishra’s institute, provides land surface hydrology forecast for periods of seven days and four weeks.

“It is likely that several states are heading into severe drought, and the water crisis is expected to worsen in the coming months as the summer sets in. This will put an additional burden on groundwater, which will be extracted mindlessly,” he warned.

The ‘other’ monsoon

South Asia has two monsoons: the southwest or summer monsoon from June to September, and the northeast or winter monsoon between October and December. The southwest monsoon brings most of the annual rainfall over India. According to a 2012 study, India receives about 11% of its annual rainfall – with many districts in the south receiving 30-60% – during the northeast monsoon season.

A 2017 report prepared by the Regional Meteorological Centre, Chennai, reads:

… for the extreme southeastern state of Tamil Nadu and the Union Territory of Puducherry…, the normal southwest monsoon seasonal rainfall realised is only about 35% (317.2 mm) of its annual rainfall (914.4 mm) as this subdivision comes under the rain-shadow region during the southwest monsoon.

On September 29 last year, the IMD issued an operational forecast for the 2018 northeast monsoon, saying that the rainfall over the south “is most likely to be normal (89%-110% of long period average), with a tendency to be [on] the positive side of the normal.” It added that the rainfall over Tamil Nadu is most likely to be above normal, i.e. over 112% of the long-term average. But it hasn’t come to be.

Part of the problem is that the evolution of the northeast monsoon is harder to predict than that of the southwest monsoon. This is because the former has a variability of 25% against the latter’s 10%, according to M. Rajeevan, secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

He said the met department attempts to the northeast monsoon using a statistical model and which remains a “grey area”. “Dynamical models have absolutely no skill in northeast monsoon seasonal rainfall prediction. We need to do more work on northeast monsoon. There are very few studies and not many people are working on it.”

Sridhar Balasubramanian, associate professor of mechanical engineering and an adjunct faculty member at IDP Climate Studies, IIT Bombay, said that the northeast monsoon is highly variable because it is governed by the climatic dynamics of the Bay of Bengal, which is itself is hard to predict. And “apart from the global weather phenomenon of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the northeast monsoon is also affected by factors like the Indian Ocean dipole and the Madden-Julian Oscillation,” he said.

Also read: Why India Struggles to Predict the Weather Over Its Lands

Oscillations are climate patterns that involve a back-and-forth variation of some climate variable. For example, the variation of sea surface temperature “along a stretch of the equatorial Central and East Pacific Ocean and the western coast of tropical South America” is encapsulated by the El Niño Southern Oscillation.

The Indian Ocean dipole “is an irregular oscillation of sea-surface temperatures in which the western Indian Ocean becomes alternately warmer and then colder than the eastern part of the ocean” (source).

“During the 2018 northeast monsoon season, these factors weren’t favourable for a normal seasonal rainfall,” Balasubramanian added.

Satellite images analysed by Raj B. Palanichamy, an Earth-observation and GIS expert, show dry tanks in northern Tamil Nadu and dry lakes around Chennai. His results are available to see below:

Note: All satellite images contain modified Copernicus Sentinel Data.

Nidhi Jamwal is an independent journalist based in Mumbai.

They Helped the Forest Grow. But in the Face of Climate Change, They’re Helpless.

The Pichavaram mangrove forest near Chidambaram, Cuddalore, is the world’s second largest of its kind. And 150 Irula families helped nurture it in the 1980s and 1990s.

Pichavaram, Tamil Nadu: Sitting on the floor of her dingy hutment, Sengi Amma fixes her fishing net, recalling the time every trip to the Pichavaram estuary used to fetch her 10 baskets of fishes. Back then, each basket – about 15 kg – would sell for Rs 200.

“In the last 15 years or so, fish catch has declined drastically, and now I barely get one basket a trip,” she said.

The drop in catch has directly hit the livelihoods of 150 Irula families in MGR Nagar, a small settlement near Pichavaram in Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu.

The Irula are a scheduled tribe. “We own no farmland and our fathers and forefathers used to work like bonded labourers,” said Mari Muthu, a 40-year-old resident of MGR Nagar. “Our traditional occupation was catching snakes and rats. Our community has also been stigmatised as vaider [poachers].”

Over the last few decades, they have tried their hands at different jobs. But despite their efforts, Muthu thinks they’re eventually going to become climate refugees.

He’s referring to shifting rainfall patterns and sea-level rise, both of which are affecting the estuary and its fish over the last two decades. “The estuary isn’t getting enough fresh water and sea-water,” Muthu said. “After the 2004 tsunami, the mouth of the estuary has faced sedimentation,” as a result of which the fish aren’t able to move from the sea into the estuary.

In fact, climate change isn’t affecting just the Irula families in MGR Nagar. “There are 591 fishing villages along Tamil Nadu’s coastal areas and all of them are facing challenges due to changes in the coastline,” said T Asai Thambi, a team leader with the coastal conservation and livelihood programme of the DHAN Foundation, Madurai. He added that the warming waters have also adversely affected the sizes and populations of fish, and that many of them have “migrated to other areas”.

A. Ramachandran, an emeritus professor at the Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation Research, Anna University, recently concluded a study of how climate change will affect Tamil Nadu specifically. He cautioned that the northeast monsoon, which kicks in between October and December, will be particularly bad for fishers, including the Irula.

“Sea-level rise poses a serious threat to the fishing villages in the state, many of whom will be engulfed by the sea, and force fishers to become climate refugees,” Ramachandran said at a workshop on climate justice in the Bay of Bengal region in November.

Sea-level rise projections – from 4.51 cm to 4.94 cm – along Tamil Nadu's coastal districts by 2025. Source: A. Ramachandran

Sea-level rise projections – from 4.51 cm to 4.94 cm – along Tamil Nadu’s coastal districts by 2025. Source: A. Ramachandran

A symbiosis

The Irula are one of six primitive tribal groups that Tamil Nadu’s northern northern districts. They are known for their knowledge and use of herbal medicines, tracking and digging skills, and have been dubbed “the last forest scientists of the world”.

Members of this tribe are adept at catching snakes by tradition. They played an important role in helping export large amounts of snake skin during the 1950s and 1960s. However, trade in this organ was banned after the Wildlife (Protection) Act kicked in in 1972. Herpetologists have noted that this left the Irula unable to feed themselves.

“Most members of our tribe were illiterate and mistreated. After the ban on snake-hunting, our fathers started working as bonded labourers for landlords,” said Kuppamma, a resident of MGR Nagar. “We were leading a cursed life as we had no land and no livelihood.”

Before moving to MGR Nagar in the mid-1970s, the Irula families lived in nearby Panandopu village under the constant threat of eviction.

“In the 1970s, M.G.Ramachandran visited our area for a film shoot and saw our plight. He helped us get land titles and settled us in this area,” according to Kuppamma. And that’s why it’s called MGR Nagar.

However, they still had no sources of income.

“We started fishing in the Pichavaram mangrove forest estuary. Since we were too poor to afford fishing nets, we would fish with our bare hands, by building small mud check-dams to catch the fish,” according to Muthu. However, the forest department soon banned these dams for fishing because that affected the movement of water within the mangrove forest.

The Pichavaram mangrove forest near Chidambaram, Cuddalore, is the world’s second largest of its kind. It is spread over 1,350 hectares between two estuaries the Vellar in the north and the Kollidam in the south.

A 2010 report by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Chennai, states that every year, “about 245 tonnes of fishery produce is harvested from this mangrove wetland, of which prawns alone constitute 208 tons (85%) of the catch.”

An environment ministry estimate holds that 1,900 fishers and 800-900 cattle grazers depend on the mangrove wetland for their livelihood. The wetland forest itself is home to over 13 species of mangroves.

A map of the Pichavaram mangrove forest between the Vellar and Kollidam estuaries. Credit: MoEFCC

A map of the Pichavaram mangrove forest between the Vellar and Kollidam estuaries. Credit: MoEFCC

To support the Irula families in MGR Nagar and other neighbouring hamlets, the forest department offered them work: to dig channels inside the Pichavaram mangrove forest to help spread water inside the estuary and help the mangroves grow.

Sengi Amma, another Irula resident in the area, said that they were paid Rs 60 for every 10 metres of channel dug about 30 years ago, in the late 1980s. “Then, in the early 1990s,” the MSSRF “approached us to restore the Pichavaram mangrove forest by planting mangroves. We were offered Rs 120 for every 10 metres of channel dug and mangrove restoration work carried out. That became our new source of livelihood,” she said.

“Between 1990 and 1993, we restored 10 hectare of mangrove forest in Pichavaram with the support of local villagers, including the Irula of MGR Nagar. The forest department was involved, too,” said R. Ramasubramaniam, the principal scientist at MSSRF’s coastal systems research programme.

Restoring a mangrove meant connecting a degenerated area to a natural canal nearby through a long and deep artificial canal. Multiple feeder canals were dug to cover the entire degraded area.

This network of grooves allowed tidal water to freely flow in and out of the degraded area, thus decreasing its salinity and improving soil moisture. Thereafter, mangrove seedlings were planted.

Muthu said they realised how important the forest was after the 2004 tsunami. “Seven villagers in MGR Nagar died in the tsunami, but our losses were very little compared to the widespread destruction around us because the mangroves had acted as a natural shield.”

 

Between 1992 and 2005, mangrove plantations covered over 400 ha of land in Pichavaram. Of this, the MSSRF had set up 100 ha and the forest department the rest. And all of it happened with the help of the local communities, Ramasubramaniam said. The forest department formalised this relationship in 1997 and introduced a ‘joint forest management plan’ in Pichavaram.

“The villagers were trained to dig canals, plant mangroves and carry out desilting work. Now they operate boats inside the mangrove forest during tourist season and earn a living. Fishing is also allowed,” according to G. Muthukumaran, who has been working with the forest department at Pichavaram for the last 20 years.

The estuaries of the Vellar and Kollidam rivers, which form part of the Pichavaram wetland forest, are ideal breeding grounds for fish. “There are several fishes that lay eggs in the sea, and the larvae come to the estuary because the estuary is less salty and has more food available,” Ramasubramaniam explained.

However, climate change is fast changing the face of the mangrove forest, which has a direct bearing on the coastal communities. “The estuary is not receiving enough freshwater and we fear that in the coming years, some species of mangroves may disappear from Pichavaram. This will also affect fishes in the estuary,” Ramasubramaniam said.

Muthukumaran is worried for the same reason. “The estuary is not receiving freshwater, and for the last two years, we have had little rainfall.”

Temperature and rainfall projections in Tamil Nadu, by 2100. Source: A. Ramachandran et al, 2016

Temperature and rainfall projections in Tamil Nadu, by 2100. Source: A. Ramachandran et al, 2016

In a 2016 study, Ramachandran and his colleagues at Anna University drew up regional climate-change projections for Tamil Nadu. They expect an average temperature rise of 3.1º C and an annual rainfall decline of 4% by 2100 – all drastic numbers.

Sengi Amma doesn’t know where the Irulas familiar can go or what they can do next. “The mangrove restoration work is over and now the forest department needs labour for desilting. It pays a daily wage of Rs 300 to men and Rs 200 to women – but we want it raised,” she said.

To make ends meet, the residents of MGR Nagar have also taken up odd jobs for daily wages. “We cannot survive on fishing alone,” Kuppamma said.

The Irulas aren’t alone – but that’s not any solace. In 2015, scientists at the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Chennai, collected data on indigenous technical knowledge from 200 fishers in and around the city. In their paper, they reported that most fishers believed the effects of climate change seemed to be more pronounced after the tsunami, especially since about 2010.

However, their blame was pointed squarely at overfishing, juvenile exploitation and habitat destruction.

Nidhi Jamwal is an independent journalist based in Mumbai.

NGT Okays New Road Project on Floodplains of the Panzara River in Dhule

The Public Works Department, which is building the road, says it could be ‘submersible’ to keep it from being damaged during floods.

On November 19, 2018, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) rejected an application seeking an injunction against the construction of a road in a floodplains.

The application had been made by Narendra G. Pardeshi, a municipal corporator in Dhule, Maharashtra. He had approached the tribunal alleging that the 11-km-long, 15-m-wide road, split on either side of the Panzara river, was being built illegally. The builder in question was the Public Works Department (PWD).

According to Pardeshi, building such a road on the floodplains “requires a no-objection certificate from the Dhule Municipal Corporation” because they’re in the municipality’s jurisdiction. The state irrigation department also has to okay it.

However, the PWD has obtained none of these clearances “and the construction is underway,” Pardeshi alleged. His lawyer, Sreeja Chakraborty, also said the deputy commissioner of police in Dhule had refused a no-objection certificate to the road projects in March 2017 – as did the irrigation department.

Pardeshi also claimed state authorities had misinformed the tribunal that ‘existing’ roads along the river were simply being upgraded.

But in its order, the NGT dismissed Pardeshi’s complaint and said “the present project will only facilitate the traffic” (sic) and also directed Maharashtra “to develop at least one biodiversity park in the floodplains”.

This surprised river activists and environmentalists.

“Floodplains are a part of the groundwater recharge system. Constructing roads on floodplains means increased risk of flooding and reduced aquifer recharge, which in turn will affect river flow during the lean season,” Manoj Misra, an ex-officer of the Indian Forest Service and convenor of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, an NGO, said. “The floodplains of rivers have their own biodiversity and there is no need for a human-made biodiversity park on it. All we need is protection of the existing floodplains.”

The PWD conceded that some roads along the river were being fixed – but also claimed it was only “protecting” the river by building the new road.

“We have removed encroachments such as hutments, burial ground and religious structures from the floodplains to construct the roads,” Aejaz Shah, an engineer with the PWD, told The Wire.

“We will build submersible roads which won’t be damaged when the river floods. A retaining wall along the river and the road together will put an end to any further encroachments on the floodplains,” he added.

Construction work in the Panzara river's floodplains in Dhule, Maharashtra. Credit: Sreeja Chakraborty

Construction work in the Panzara river’s floodplains in Dhule, Maharashtra. Credit: Sreeja Chakraborty

The PWD has also proposed building a barrage-cum-bridge on the river, within Dhule city limits.

In October 2016, according to Pardeshi, the Dhule Municipal Corporation received a note from the Town Planning Department saying Rs 30 crore had been sanctioned to build roads on both sides of the Panzara. Shortly after, earthmovers showed up to level the floodplains.

“I shot off letters to the collector and other concerned officials, informing them about illegal construction on the floodplains, but no action was taken and the work continued,” Pardeshi said.

According Chakraborty, the National Water Policy 2012 and Section 24 of the the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974 both prohibit impediments to a river’s flow. Additionally, an NGT order in 2014 (Sarang Yadwadkar v. State of Maharashtra, appeal 25/2014) disallowed any construction within 50 m of the blue lines of rivers. The blue line marks off the river’s highest point of flow in 25 years.

“No construction of any nature is allowed inside the blue lines. Even the irrigation department cannot allow it,” Chakraborty said.

She believes the PWD is simply hiding behind a glitch: the blue line of the Panzara hasn’t been demarcated.

Legal battle

In July 2017, Pardeshi approached the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay high court to stop the project. But he soon reconsidered, withdrew his petition from the high court and approach the NGT, which deals with all environment issues.

The tribunal heard the matter but reserved judgment in March 2018 for the summer holidays. When it reopened, the judge on the case had changed and his successor wanted to rehear it. And the successor “dismissed the petition in November without discussing the merits of the case,” Chakraborty said.

And in its dismissal, the NGT quoted the Maharashtra government’s reply on April 9, 2018: “… the road in question already exists except for one or two small stretches. … The present activities are of upgrading and strengthening the existing construction, after reviewing encroachments.”

It has also quoted the State Pollution Control Board’s reply: that “Section 24 of the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974 does not apply as the construction is to improve the existing roads and is not a new construction”.

Ravinder Jadhav, the deputy commissioner of Dhule, told The Wire, “Some roads already existed along the Panzara river and some were being newly constructed under the project.”

When asked about the lack of clearances, he said, “This project is being promoted and implemented by the state government and a state government agency in the public interest. Why ask about a no-objection certificate when the government is doing the project in the people’s interest?”

Some of the 'encroachments' the PWD claims it will remove during the project. Credit: PWD

Some of the ‘encroachments’ the PWD claims it will remove during the project. Credit: PWD

Shah, the PWD engineer, alleges Pardeshi’s petition was politically motivated. (Pardeshi had been a corporator for 15 years.)

“There are already eight bridges on the Panzara river that connect both parts of Dhule city,” he continued. “We are upgrading some small roads and creating some new roads.” He also claimed the PWD will plant 7,000 trees along the roads – of which over 3,000 trees, brought in from Andhra Pradesh, have already been planted.

According to Chakraborty, however, this is a straightforward case of encroachment because the clearances – setting aside the question of whether the government is really doing this for the people – just don’t exist. They also directly the law.

“In its March 2018 reply, the state water resources department informed the court that demarcating flood-lines” was an arduous task and “would require at least six months” just for the Panzara, she said. “This hasn’t been done.”

“Infrastructure projects such as retaining walls along the river and concrete roads sever rivers from their floodplains and stop rivers from performing their natural functions,” Misra said. Such misplaced projects are often a death knell for our water bodies.”

To him, the only thing left to do now was to approach the Supreme Court. In the meantime, Shah said, the Panzara floodplains road project should be completed by May 2019.

Nidhi Jamwal is an independent journalist based in Mumbai.