MISSION MANGROVE

For the past 50 years, the surface temperature of the Arabian Sea off Mumbai’s coast has been rising steadily, says a report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published in July.

- Kiran D. Tare

Another report by the World Resources Institute (WRI) India, published in August, says Mumbai is becoming warmer and has seen a substantial increase in extreme rainfall events in the past few years. Mumbai and Surat, it adds, will see regular floods if the problem is not contained.

The effects of climate change in Mumbai are becoming more stark with every passing year. As per the WRI report, Mumbai has been witnessing an increase in the number of ‘extreme caution days’—when the temperature varies from 32 to 42 degrees Celsius. On average, Mumbai records 187 extreme caution days in a year and, in the past couple of years, has witnessed two to three days of extreme rainfall (above 200mm a day) during the monsoon. According to a study by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), a rising sea level will submerge about 70 per cent of south Mumbai by 2050. On August 5 this year, after heavy rains, south Mumbai was under five feet of water!

The alarming findings of the WRI and IPCC reports have brought back focus on Mumbai’s neglected mangroves that protect and stabilise the city’s coastline, which acts as a barrier against natural disasters. In 2019, a research paper, titled ‘Mangroves in Mumbai’, authored by Dr Leena Sarkar, a chemistry professor in Navi Mumbai’s JVM College, highlighted the role of mangroves in “protect[ing] coastal areas from erosion, storm, surge and tsunamis”.