A cyclone-hit Indian hamlet pins its hopes on a sea wall

Nearly two years ago, Mary Sebastian was hoisted on a chair and carried by a policeman in waist-deep floodwaters, leaving behind her now damaged home where she had spent more than 70 years of her life. She never thought she would return.

So, when Sebastian, now 85, recently recounted her experience during Cyclone Tauktae, which hammered parts of southern India in May 2021, she became emotional as the memories came rushing back. Having returned to the same tiny, tiled-roof home, she expressed hope that a sea wall being erected on the coast just in front of her house would check raging waves of the Arabian sea and keep her safe.

“I feel that at least now we have a shield to protect the coast,” she said. “To stop the waves suddenly hitting the shores and sending it back to the sea.”

“Nothing like that had been here for years,” she added.

Like many native dwellers of Chellanam, a fishing hamlet of 40,000 people in India’s southern state of Kerala, Sebastian is living with fears of many weather events exacerbated by climate change: cyclones, surging seas, flooding and erosion. Tens of millions of people in India, this year expected to become the world’s most populous nation, live along coastlines and thus are exposed to major weather events.

One common adaptation technique, in India and other countries hit hard by rising seas and oceanic storms, is to build sea walls. While they provide a barrier that seas have to get over, scientists and climate adaptation experts warn that such structures can only provide so much protection.

Deadly tropical cyclones like Tauktae and Ockhi a few years before, in 2017, formed in the Arabian Sea, devastated the hamlet and aggravated the existing coastal issues. For years, different parts of Chellanam and surrounding areas have had a patchwork of small sea walls and other methods to try and reduce destruction.

At least 10,000-12,000 residents are affected by the coastal erosion and extreme wave issues every year, according to K L Joseph, former president of Chellanam’s village council.

Joseph said Chellanam has tried other methods to protect homes and people, such as a large project some years ago involving geotubes. Laid along coastlines, tubes made of polymer are filled with sand, thus providing a barrier that is flexible to accommodate waves. But parts of the tubes broke apart, with local news reports recounting how chunks were washed out to sea.

“It failed,” Joseph said of the project.