Mamata’s grand plans may spell doom for beaches

KOLKATA, 25 JAN: The draft state action plan on climate change, compiled by various state departments and agencies, has proven the chief minister Miss Mamata Banerjee, who at the Beach Festival recently
declared her grand tourism plans for Mandarmani and Sankarpur beaches, environmentally incorrect, so to speak.
During the beach festival, Miss Banerjee had said: “I am told Mandarmani is the only beach on which one can drive cars. It has the potential to become a major tourist spot”, adding that she has plans to decongest Digha and turn the beaches of Mandarmani and Shankarpur into international sea destinations “capable of rivaling Goa”.
Driving on the beaches on Mandarmani would not only be harmful to the beach environment, but would also spell doom for biodiversity as the beaches of Mandarmani and Sankarpur are known to be
carpeted with Red Fiddler crabs; they are also some of the few places where casuarina groves are still untouched.
The draft of the state’s action plan for climate change, which is being formulated by each state as a part of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), clearly attributes the abnormal rate of sea level rise on the state’s coastlines, to, apart from global warming, subsidence of the land mass near the coasts and also to “developmental
activities”.
“Frequency of severe cyclonic storms is increasing over (the) Bay of Bengal and the sea level is rising globally, however, the level of rise is higher along the coast line of West Bengal, mostly due to subsidence of the land mass near the coast and also may be due to developmental activities, leading to submergence of islands in the eastern region of the coast,” the report says.
The chief minister, as if to put balm on the sore, had directed the Digha Shankarpur Development Authority (DSDA) chairman, Mr Debashis Sen, to submit a status report on Mandarmani’s illegal hotels in a week. But one can’t help but doubt the intention when the
chief minister herself spoke of developing resorts in these places.
The average sea level rise has been 1.3 mm per year along the Indian coast. However, tide gauge observations at Diamond Harbour port indicate a sea level rise of 5.7 mm. Subsidence in the region is at the rate of 4 mm per year. Any unplanned development would mean a threat to more than 70 lakh people living near the coasts in West Bengal.
Sea level rise is expected to exacerbate inundation, storm surge, erosion and other coastal hazards.
A lesson or two may be taken from Goa where, with years of tourist inflow, the two rivers Mandovi and Zuari have become highly polluted due to the on-boat casinos and unchecked flow of municipal waste.

Soma Basu