Mumbai: Mumbai municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal has predicted that by 2050, a major portion of south Mumbai, including Nariman Point and the state secretariat Mantralaya, will be underwater due to rising sea levels.
During the launch of the Mumbai Climate Action Plan and its website by Maharashtra Environment and Tourism Minister Aaditya Thackeray on Friday, Chahal said about 70 per cent of the city’s A, B, C and D wards in south Mumbai will be underwater due to climate change.
According to him, nature has been warning, but if people don’t ‘wake up’, then the situation would become ‘dangerous’. ‘Eighty percent of the areas like Cuffe Parade, Nariman Point and Mantralaya will be underwater…Means going to disappear,’ he said.
It is a matter of 25-30 years as 2050 is not too far away, according to the civic chief. ‘We are getting warnings from nature and if we do not wake up, it will be a dangerous situation for the next 25 years. And it will not only be the next generation but the current generation will also suffer,’ Chahal warned.
In his opinion, Mumbai is the first city in South Asia preparing a climate action plan and implementing it. ‘Earlier, we used to hear about climate change events like melting glaciers, but not directly affecting us. But now it has come to our doorstep,’ he added.
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According to Chahal, Mumbai was hit by a cyclone (Nisarga) for the first time in 129 years and since then there have been three cyclones in the last 15 months. After that, on August 5, 2020, about 5 to 5.5 feet water was accumulated at Nariman point. ‘There was no cyclone warning that day, but considering the parameters, it was a cyclone,’ Chahal said.
He said that the city had recently had some extreme weather conditions, including the Tauktae cyclone in Mumbai and 214 mm of rain on May 17, even though the monsoon arrives only by June 6th or 7th.
Before June 9th this year, Mumbai received 84 percent of the month’s rainfall in June, and from July 17 to 20, 70 per cent of the month’s average rainfall was received.
The Mumbai Climate Action Plan (MCAP) identified areas and communities most vulnerable because of climate uncertainty, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said in a press release.
Over the past 10 years, Mumbai has seen six heavy, five very heavy, and four extremely heavy rainfall days per year, according to data from 37 of BMC’s automatic weather stations (AWS). There is approximately 10 percent of Mumbai’s rainfall that falls under the heavy category each year, nine percent very heavy, and six percent extremely heavy.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) considers daily rainfall between 64.5 mm and 115.5 mm ‘heavy’, 115.6 mm to 204.4 mm ‘very heavy’, and more than 204.5 mm ‘extreme’.
‘The four-year period between 2017 and 2020 has seen a steady increase in the extremely heavy rainfall events. This indicates that the frequency of such extreme weather events is increasing for the city of Mumbai especially over the past four years,’ said Lubaina Rangwala, Associate Director, WRI India Ross Center for Sustainable Cities.
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