The coast is an insurance against the angry sea
If the authorities were smart, they would remove buildings from the seafront, instead of watering down the CRZ rules
Ever since the year began, the Centre has touched one raw nerve after the other in Tamil Nadu. As if the hydrocarbon controversy in the Cauvery delta and Tarun Vijay’s remarks on ‘black’ south Indians were not enough, the Union environment ministry is now reportedly working to replace existing coastal protection rules with a law that will allow reclamation of seas and coastal wetlands. Branding the proposal as a government-facilitated land grab to privatise coastal commons, fisherfolk from Tamil Nadu have declared they will give a fitting reply if the government refuses to abandon the move. The environment ministry’s proposal will open up coastal poromboke areas (land that belongs to the government) such as the seashore and intertidal wetlands for tourism and commercial exploitation.
The Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification has been seen as a hindrance to “development” as it restricts activities on the coast. Curiously, the law applies only to a 500-metre strip along India’s 7,500 km coastline, leaving the hinterland open for business-as-usual. Even three decades ago, the shoreline was seen as a hostile place where fishing villages had to cry for attention and basic infrastructure. But now fisher folk are squeezed between a seaward moving urban-industrial monster and a landward moving sea. To the fisher, an unbuilt coastline represents livelihood security, housing security and safety from extreme weather events particularly in a climate-changing scenario. The growth-wallahs in Delhi see coastlines as wasted real estate, and the sea and tidal water bodies as real estate that somehow got covered by water.
The current CRZ Notification, though flawed and merrily violated, has elements that can protect coastal environment and fisher livelihoods. It prohibits the reclamation of sea or intertidal wetlands. It mandates the identification of and action against violations. It is a different matter that in the six years that the law has been in force, none of these provisions has been implemented. Rather than undo this legislation, the government should strengthen it and make it an act of parliament.
In seeing the coast as real estate to be developed, the environment ministry is exposing a dangerous naiveté about what the sea is capable of. The coast is the buffer that protects the land from the sea. A healthy, sparsely built coastline is our best insurance against an angry sea. With atmospheric carbon dioxide levels spiralling out of control, dangerous sea level rise and frequent and more intense extreme weather events are a certainty in the years to come. Smarter people would be reducing disaster risk by un-building the coastline. But in India, before we get to disaster risk reduction, we have to figure out what to do about the disaster that our environment ministry has become.