Willingness to address coastal pressures missing

“The coast is an edgy place. Living on the coast presents certain stark realities and a wild, rare beauty. Continent confronts ocean. Weather intensifies. It’s a place of tide and tantrum; of flirtations among fresh- and salt waters, forests and shores; of tense negotiations with an ocean that gives much but demands more. Every year the raw rim that is this coast gets hammered and reshaped like molten bronze. This place roils with power and a sometimes terrible beauty. The coast remains youthful, daring, uncertain about tomorrow….”.  

Tamil Nadu’s coastal zones are under multiple pressures and face a large number of economic, social and environmental problems, the most critical of which are as follows:   the first of these pertains to the destruction and degradation of coastal habitats.  

Coastal habitats are fragile and are often manipulated to make way for housing, industry, agricultural land, and infrastructure for tourism and transport.  The high density of human population that is both resident and transient in nature often acts as a major driver. 

Habitat changes occur specifically as a consequence of expanding human activities that convert natural areas to artificial surfaces.  This is not limited only to the oft stated industry and port development, but also includes demands from agriculture, aquaculture, transport, flood defence and waste storage.  The second pressure is of pollution.  

As transition zones between terrestrial and marine environments, coasts are affected by a wide range of pollution sources both from the sea and land.  The attention given to the recent oil spill is more of an exception, for much of the pollution occurring in the sea is invisible and therefore remains unknown.  

Pollution from landbased activities that are comparatively much widely discussed, reaches the coast through rivers, and can accumulate significant loads of agro-pesticides, nutrients, heavy metals and industrial chemical compounds. 

In the absence of well-designed waste water management systems, coastal zones are typified by high loads of nitrogen and phosphorus.  This contributes to eutrophication (which is an adverse change in ecosystems) thatis caused by increased inflows of nutrients both from rivers and direct discharges, including precipitation.  

High nitrate and phosphate loads lead to flourishing of blue-green algae, which can choke all other aquatic life through its high oxygen consumption.  The third in the series is that imposed by climate change wherein additional pressure is thrust upon coastal ecosystems by accelerating sea level rise, increased water temperatures, storms, erosion and flooding. 

Coastal seas experiencing rapid surface warming are often surrounded by major industrial/population agglomerations, with likely direct anthropogenic influence. Freshwater inflows play a particular role in modulating and exacerbating the global warming effects. 

Tamil Nadu with its considerable extent of shallow seas is especially vulnerable to sea level rise. Also of considerable impact is overexploitation of key fish stocks which alters the biological capacity of coastal ecosystems.  

Exploitation of sand, gravel, coral when permitted, as also ad hoc beach nourishment deteriorates natural coastal habitats. This together with the artificialisation of rivers (change in river course for instance) and development of ad hoc road transport infrastructure affects the shoreline and coastal dynamics. Excessive groundwater extraction to meet the demands of irrigation, growing population and tourism can make marine saltwater intrusion a serious problem. 

A silent, yet serious concern is that of coastal erosion which is largely caused by sediment starvation of the coast as a consequence of river dams, although intensive development and sand mining can also contribute to coastal habitat destruction. 

If currents are disturbed by coastal infrastructure, the dynamic equilibrium between erosion and accretion may be lost and unwanted changes in the coast morphology and functions can result.  Evidently, much of these pressures can be prevented, controlled or even corrected.  The willingness to do so is what is missing.