The government has formulated plans to rehabilitate people from low-lying coastal areas who may be adversely impacted due to rising sea levels in the coming decade, Union Minister Jitendra Singh informed the Rajya Sabha today.
In a written reply, he said the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has prepared a draft policy on “Mitigation and Rehabilitation measures for people displaced by Coastal and River Erosion” to deal with the extensive displacement of people caused by coastal and river erosion.
Jitendra Singh pointed out that the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) an autonomous organisation of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) has carried out Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) mapping to assess the probable implications of sea-level rise along the Indian coast.
He said this exercise has generated maps using seven input parameters: shoreline change rate, sea-level change rate, coastal elevation, coastal slope, coastal geomorphology, significant wave height and tidal range.
A report on the “National Assessment of Shoreline Changes along Indian Coast” was shared with various central and state government agencies and stakeholders for implementing shoreline protection measures. The Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) through its institutes is also providing technical solutions and advice to the State Governments and UTs to deal with coastal erosion threats.
The National Centre for Coastal Research (NCCR), Chennai, an attached office of MoES, has been monitoring shoreline erosion since 1990 using remote sensing data and GIS mapping techniques.
Totally, the 6907.18 km long coastline of the mainland has been analyzed for the period from 1990 to 2018. It is noted that 33.6% of the coastline is under varying degrees of erosion, 26.9% is of accreting nature and the remaining 39.5% is in a stable state.