BHUBANESWAR: Jaga Rao of Ramayapatna village in Odisha’s Ganjam district used to be a happy man. Like many other traditional fishermen of the region, every morning, he loved setting out into the Bay of Bengal where landing fish was never a problem. Now it is a never-ending struggle with the sea.
The Bay of Bengal has advanced more than 600 metre into his village, located under Chikiti block, gobbling up hundreds of acres of farmland and more than 100 dwelling units. Rao lost his house to the marauding sea but cannot leave Ramayapatna as fishing sustains his five-member family.
Five hundred metres from the new shoreline, he currently lives in the house of another villager who left for Andhra Pradesh in search of work. “The monsoon season brings fear. No one knows when the hungry sea will devour this house too,” he says.
Rao is caught between the devil and the deep sea.
Though Odisha typically has a pro-gradation coast due to the disposal of sediment and discharge from Mahanadi river, it is now turning into a hotspot of coastal erosion with climate change doubling down the impact. The conversion process is rampant in hotspots like Boxipalli and Podampeta in Ganjam district, Baliapanda, Chadrabhaga beach in Puri district, Pentha and Satabhaya in Kendrapara and Chandipur beach and Subarnarekha estuary in Balasore.
At least four villages in Ganjam district face extreme coastal erosion. Podampeta under Ganjam block is now a ghost village as nearly 450 families have already been relocated to a nearby habitation.
Spectre over six districts
A happy hunting ground for natural calamities, Odisha faces the threat of tropical cyclones like no other. Add to it the misery of vanishing landmasses. State’s Forest, Environment and Climate Change assessed sea erosion threats in 318 villages of six coastal districts - Ganjam, Puri, Kendrapara, Balasore, Jagatsinghpur and Bhadrak. While 91 villages are designated ‘most prone,’ 85 villages are ‘prone’ to sea erosion. With 49 villages facing the charging sea, Kendrapara is the worst hit. Eight each in Balasore and Bhadrak districts, four in Ganjam and one each in Puri and Jagatsinghpur districts are vulnerable to coastal erosion.
In Kendrapara district, Satabhaya panchayat under Rajnagar block stands testimony to the erosion as the sea has swallowed it. The panchayat having a cluster of 16 seaside villages has been reduced to a few hamlets by now.
The Subarnarekha river in Balasore district has already swallowed about 75 per cent of Badakhanpur village and its neighbouring Sanakhanpur. Of more than 120 families, only fifty hold on to their dwelling units while the rest have shifted base to neighbouring villages. The ferocious nature has redrawn the map of over 40 villages in Bhogarai, Jaleswar, Baliapal, Remuna and Sadar blocks in the coastal district.
According to a global study conducted by 11 researchers from six universities, almost the entire Gopalpur shoreline experienced erosion between 2010 and 2020 and the construction of Gopalpur port markedly impacted the shoreline dynamics. Of the 480 km sea coast of Odisha, erosion trend has surfaced across 227 km, accretion recorded in 150 km while coast character remains unchanged over the rest.
Professor of Geography department at FM University Manoranjan Mishra said most ports on the east coast have shown a pattern of erosion and deposition, 52 per cent Odisha coastline faces erosion at one stretch or other. Construction of breakwater perpendicular to the coastline prevented the uniform distribution of littoral sediments in all cases, he said.
Coastal infrastructure
With the Odisha government contemplating construction of 14 more ports, researchers warn such infrastructure could potentially impact its fragile coastal system. Resilience of the coastal landforms is compromised due to the construction of onshore and offshore coastal infrastructures in order to meet the growing demand for economic activities.
Previous studies too had observed a similar trend of erosion and accretion along the eastern coast. The northern part of Paradip port experiences intense erosion due to the construction of a rigid engineering structure (sea wall). The southern part of the port also had signs of erosion. Although accretion pattern was witnessed along Dhamra port from 1990 to 2000, drastic erosion was observed after the port area development in 2007.
Meanwhile, closer to Ramayapatna, erosion has impacted nesting of Olive Ridley turtles. The impact was so high that turtles for the first time in 30 years changed their nesting site from the Rushikulya rookery to a nearby Island, south of Rushikulya river, said secretary of Rushikulya Sea Turtle Protection Committee Rabindranath Sahu. Earlier, the marine turtles used to lay eggs on the 5 km beach from Purunabandha to Podampeta, north of the river mouth.
While state government had relocated residents from Satabhaya and Podampeta and laid geo-synthetic walls along the Satabhaya coast as part of protection measures, the Ganjam seaside villages have long been demanding a protection wall.
Superintendent engineer, Berhampur Irrigation division Jayadeep Panda said as per recommendations made by National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), a 3.4 metre sea wall along the 1200 metre stretch covering Ramayapatna will be built at a cost of `23 crore. “Work will start by next month and it will provide protection to the villages south of Rushikulya. The Podampeta stretch will be taken up in the next phase,” he said.
“The best way forward is to protect salt marshes and mud flats in the coastal regions. Besides, mangrove protection and rejuvenation must be focussed. Similarly, it is critical to create soft structure instead of hard structures to fend off the impact of erosion,” said PCCF and Project Director, Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project Susanta Nanda.