Rising sea level threat to India’s eroding coastline

Why in the News

India’s coastal no-build strip is still measured from today’s high-tide line, even as the shoreline retreats and the sea rises faster. The UN General Assembly (UNGA) has adopted its first ever declaration on rising sea levels, asking nations to build sea-level rise projections into coastal infrastructure planning.

What does the UN declaration settle about statehood?

1. Montevideo test: The 1933 Montevideo Convention defines a State by a permanent population, defined territory, government and capacity to enter into relations with other states. A sinking country risks failing the territory test.
2. Continued statehood: The declaration’s “presumption in favour of continued statehood” lets a sinking country keep its sovereignty, UN seat and nautical boundaries. It works like a title deed that survives the flood.
3. Displaced people: Countries must protect the human rights of those who lose homes. Eg. Over a third of Tuvalu‘s 11,000 people have sought Australian climate visas.
4. The takeaway: Sinking island nations such as Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Maldives keep their legal existence.

What does India gain from a pledge meant for small islands?

1. India’s stand: India backed stable maritime zones and reaffirmed “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities”: those who caused more warming and can pay more should do more.
2. Island count: A 2023-24 remeasurement counts 1,298 offshore islands and islets.
3. Island boundaries: Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands push India’s sea boundaries into the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, so fixed boundaries protect India too.

Is India’s coastal law ready for a retreating shore?

1. Eroding shoreline: The National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR) found about a third of the mainland shoreline eroding.
2. CRZ no-build strip: The Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification, 2019 bars new building within 50 metres of the high-tide line in dense rural areas and 200 metres elsewhere.
3. Moving baseline: The high-tide line marks today’s highest spring tide, so on the fastest-eroding stretches a house at the 50-metre edge reaches the water in about ten years.
4. Unused hazard line: The Survey of India‘s hazard line factors in sea level rise, but the 2019 rules use it only for disaster management and land-use planning.

Where does India fall short on people already displaced?

1. Vanishing islands: In the Sundarbans, Ghoramara island has lost about half its area in five decades.
2. Repeat displacement: Families who moved to Ghoramara from the vanished Lohachara island were displaced again within a decade, without secure tenure or livelihoods.
3. No legal category: Indian law does not recognise people who lose land gradually to erosion, so each relocation is decided case by case.
4. People at risk: A Frontiers in Marine Science review puts 45 million Indians at risk by 2050.
5. Fiji’s model: Fiji wrote relocation into its Climate Change Act in 2021, backed by a trust fund.

Challenges

1. Locked-in rise: A UN brief finds seas will keep rising for centuries to millennia even at net zero.
2. Adaptation finance gap: Developing countries’ adaptation needs far exceed the international public finance available.
3. Distant finance goal: At the Baku summit, India called the new goal of $300 billion a year by 2035 “too little and too distant”.

Way Forward

1. Hazard-line baseline: Measure the no-build strip from the hazard line, or widen it by local erosion rates before the UN review due by September 2030.
2. Erosion displacement law: Give families displaced by erosion land title and livelihood support by law.
3. Finance diplomacy: Press for “timely and predictable disbursement” of adaptation finance at COP31 in Antalya in November.

Conclusion

The UN has secured sinking States’ legal future, but India’s coastal rules still plan against a shoreline moving inland. Whether the no-build strip moves to the hazard line before the next UN review will test India’s readiness.

Key numbers

1. Sea-level rise rate (World Meteorological Organization): 2.1 mm a year in 1993-2002, 4.7 mm in 2015-2024; a record 6 mm in 2024 alone.
2. Rise by 2100 (‘Surging Seas in a Warming World’, 2024): about 38 cm at lowest emissions, about 77 cm if emissions keep climbing.
3. Erosion (NCCR, 1990-2016): 234 sq km lost, 231 sq km gained; nearly 400 km retreating over 5 metres a year and 225 km by 3 to 5 metres; over 170 km of West Bengal in the fastest category.
4. Adaptation finance (UN Environment Programme): needs over $310 billion a year by 2035; $26 billion of international public finance in 2023.
5. India’s coastline (2023-24 remeasurement): 11,098 km.
6. Ghoramara island area (Sundarbans): about 7.2 sq km shrinking to 3.6 sq km.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2020] Which one of the following statements best describes the term ‘Social Cost of Carbon’? It is a measure, in monetary value, of the (a) long-term damage done by a tonne of CO2, emissions in a given year. (b) requirement of fossil fuels for a country to provide goods and services to its citizens, (c) efforts put in by a climate refugee to adapt to live in a new place. (d) contribution of an individual person to the carbon footprint on the planet Earth. Answer: (a)”