Launching the Mumbai Climate Action Plan last week, Municipal Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal said rising sea levels meant that 80 per cent of the city’s southern tip, including Cuffe Parade, Nariman Point and Mantralaya, would be submerged by 2050. How true is this doomsday scenario? Are we being alarmist or will Mumbai eventually be swallowed by the sea, like Dwarka and the mythical city of Atlantis?
If the situation is indeed so dire, what took Chahal so long to react to a flurry of studies which predicted it two years ago? Mumbai was marked as one of the coastal cities at risk of being submerged by 2050 in a study by Climate Central, a US non-profit news organisation comprising scientists and journalists. In fact, the warning signals came as early as December 2016 when R Mani Murali of the National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, said that nearly 40 per cent of Mumbai could be under water in the next 100 years.
'Unfounded fears': Govt
If one goes by the Government of India, the fears are unfounded. In December 2019, Earth Sciences Minister Harsh Vardhan told the Rajya Sabha that Mumbai would not be submerged by 2050. However, he conceded that while the rise in sea level would not immediately impact the coasts, it could exacerbate the impacts of coastal hazards such as storm surge, tsunami, coastal flooding, high waves and coastal erosion in the low-lying coastal areas.
So, whom does one believe? Given the fact that our PM once dismissed climate change as a figment of the imagination, one would go with the scientists even if their claims could be exaggerated.
Under 3 feet of water?
Last month, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had said that rising sea levels threaten to submerge 12 Indian coastal cities by the end of the century. Mumbai, Chennai, Kochi, and Visakhapatnam, it said, could be nearly three feet under water.
The IPCC has been providing global-scale assessments of the earth’s climate every five to seven years since 1988, focusing on changes in temperature and ice cover, greenhouse gas emissions, and sea levels across the planet. Their sea-level projections are based on data gathered by satellites and instruments on the ground, as well as analysis and computer simulations.
Coming back to Mumbai, Chahal had said that 70 per cent of the area from Colaba to Haji Ali would be submerged by 2050. After all, south Mumbai’s Pydhonie (which translates as ‘foot wash’ in Marathi), was so named because before the Britishers fused the seven islands into one, the feet got wet in this stretch while crossing from one island to another at low tide.
It is not as if only south Mumbai faces submergence. Coastal areas in the entire Mumbai Metropolitan Region are in danger. Malay Kumar Pramanik, a PhD scholar from JNU, had said that areas in Dahisar, Andheri, Sewri, Trombay, Govandi, Wadala, Chembur, parts of Mulund and all the way up to Thane would be affected by rising sea levels.
He predicted that the city could lose 25 sq km — roughly the area of 1,700 Wankhede stadiums — to coastal inundation caused by a one-metre rise in sea level over the next 100 years. His 2017 study says that the coastal belt from Gorai to Mira Bhayandar will be the worst affected, owing to the Arabian Sea and the Vasai creek.
Ocean-warming
According to Roxy Matthew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, the main reason for sea-level rise along India seems to be the expansion of water volume due to ocean warming, unlike in Europe, where it is melting ice and glaciers. His understanding is that Mumbai will not be submerged by 2050 but it will gradually see prolonged and intense flooding in low-lying areas.
According to Koll, lead author of the IPCC special report of October 2019 which set the alarm bells ringing, the global average rise in sea level is 3 cm every decade whereas that in India is 3-6 cm. In the worst case scenario, he estimates a 0.5-metre rise in India by 2050 and up to one metre by 2100.
Strangely, sea-level rise and its implications are not hot-button topics in India although it may affect 300 million people world-wide, mostly in poor countries. Gujarat, the PM’s home state, would be the hardest hit. We are fatalistic and even forget about monsoon flooding as soon as monsoon is over.
Reckless growth
Instead of incorporating the truth in its urban planning that Mumbai rose from seven islands, the city has gone on spree after spree of reckless and haphazard growth. Everyone here talks of vertical growth but how many know the depth of its drains or the width of its sewers? The plan for a business district was passed in a jiffy but a storm-water drain project for the city was held up for decades. Is this how you prepare for the ‘pralay’ (doomsday) of 2050?
It was only after the deluge of July 26, 2005, that Mumbai realised that Mithi was not a nullah but a river running from Powai Lake to Mahim Creek. In fact, the Santacruz airport had diverted the river on its own to extend the runway, aggravating the flooding. The Madhav Chitale committee, set up in the aftermath of the deluge, had proposed the setting up river development authorities for each of Mumbai’s four rivers – Dahisar, Poisar, Oshiwara and Mithi – but it has been done only in the case of Mithi. Here too, the grand plans for river rejuvenation and beautification of the banks were reduced to pre-monsoon de-silting.
The cardinal sin of constructing the Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) by reclaiming the Mithi estuary had already been committed two decades before 26/7. BKC, the financial nerve-centre of India, was six feet under on 26/7. The mistake was repeated by reclaiming mangrove land in the Goregaon-Malad stretch for a software hub, Mindspace. The new airport is now coming up in Navi Mumbai in a basin of three rivers originating from the Matheran hills.
Keeping the sea at bay
Environmentalists say that Mumbai needs to think of both natural defence as well as artificial protection against sea-level rise. Mangroves are a low-cost natural protection; they absorb the force of the tides and break the flow of floods. We should also be trying out measures such as bio-drainage; a network of canals that act as drainage during floods and can retain rainwater during dry periods, as in Vasai.
However, all we can think of is underground storage chambers and tetrapods. Chahal was silent on the effect of sea-level rise on the state’s pet project, the coastal road which plans to connect north Mumbai to south Mumbai. No one asked him about the government’s plan to construct houses on salt pan land, the only open space left in the city.
The Mumbai Climate Action Plan will mean nothing if steps are not taken to prevent flooding in Mumbai. As it is, the Chitale committee’s recommendation to demarcate flood-risk zones and to regulate construction in them remains on paper because of opposition from the builder lobby. Even they see the writing on the wall; Jal Mahal, Poseidon Apartments, Sagar Apartments, Crescent Bay, Oceanic Apartments, Noah’s Ark Apartments and even Atlantis!
The writer is an independent journalist in Mumbai. He welcomes feedback on anilsinghjournalist@gmail.com
