Death by Water

Whoever said that the third world war will be for water will shudder if he sees Kerala's Kuttanad these days. Large areas of arable land went under water for the umpteenth time after the recent rains. Even the Alappuzha-Changanassery Road [AC Road, as it is known] was submerged for days. When I travelled from Changanassery toward Alappuzha yesterday, many parts of the AC Road were still under water though vehicles were plying on it. 

AC Road

I went there - the Venice of the East - to attend the funeral of a relative whose life was taken by the flood water. He was just a year older than me and had been a very energetic and healthy farmer until the waters that had inundated his paddy fields gave him a cardiac arrest. His entire labour of months had been ravaged by incessant rains. The paddy was just ripe for harvest but the rains devastated it. 

Submerged paddy fields

On the way, I saw many signboards with the offer of land and houses for sale. The people of Kuttanad want to leave their land. It has been three years now since the climate change inundated their lands and destroyed their crops. The waters enter houses too. I saw scores of houses with knee-deep water inside them. The situation was far worse a few days back. 

Kuttanad is one of the many areas in the world map that is fast becoming uninhabitable. Some parts of the world have been rendered uninhabitable by unprecedented rains while many other parts suffer from droughts. Kuttanad was Kerala's rice bowl from time immemorial. And Kuttanad was the only place in India where rice was cultivated below sea level. 

A diversion from the highway

I saw rice harvesters at work in certain paddy fields near my relative's house. How many more years will these huge machines find work in this area? 

Climate change is causing unforeseen changes all over the world. My visit to Kuttanad made me acutely conscious of the undesirable changes. For example, Antarctica is losing its ice shelves. During the past 50 years, ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula have calved into the sea resulting in loss of more than 11,000 square miles of ice. This seriously affects the lives of seals and birds in that region. 

Rising heat and crippling droughts are threatening the delicate balance of life in the African deserts. Those charming little meerkats of the Kalahari will be struggling for survival soon because of what we human beings have done to the planet. For the meerkats, survival is a group effort. There are male sentries and female nurses among them. They live in highly organised social systems. But for how long now? Hotter, drier summers are threatening to reduce their numbers. 

A Meerkat of Kalahari

Will there be snow on the Kanchenjunga a few years from now? Will the Kinyongia tavetana vanish from Kilimanjaro? Will Maldives disappear altogether? Will my own state, Kerala, retain its beautiful sea coasts? 

The ducks of Kuttanad seem to have better luck. They enjoy themselves in the waters. And the waters had entered their master's house too. Even if the master is driven out by the climate change, the ducks will continue to quack. Some hope, that is. 

The ducks of Kuttanad

PS. This post is part of Blogchatter's CauseAChatter #EnvironmentalTalks