Rising Sea Levels Threaten Indian Islands

[RestoreGore]

INDIA: March 20, 2007


MOUSHUNI ISLAND, India - Sheikh Alauddin, like hundreds of other residents living on West Bengal's Moushuni island, has never heard the term "global warming". But he is living with its consequences.

"At night we just pray to God, and hope the sea does not drown us," the 60-year-old told Reuters in Poilagheri village on the sparsely-populated island, part of the Sunderbans national park and the world's largest mangrove forest. When the tide comes in, sea water laps at the top of a mud embankment that towers 6 metres (20 feet) above Alauddin's adjacent house and is all that keeps it from being washed away.

After a 10-year study in and around the Bay of Bengal, oceanographers say the sea is rising at 3.14 millimetres a year in the Sunderbans against a global average of 2 mm, threatening low-lying areas of India and Bangladesh. "At least 15 islands have been affected but erosion is widespread in other islands as well," said Sugato Hazra, an oceanographer at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal.

A United Nations climate panel, which grouped 2,500 scientists from 130 countries, concluded last month that human activity was causing global warming and predicted more droughts, heatwaves and rising seas.

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http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/40946/story.htm

It has already begun.