Disappearing Indian islands
December 24th, 2006An inhabited island in the Sundarban region of India have disappeared, and their submergence is being blamed by some on global warming-induced sea level rise.
The Independent (UK) reports the disappearance of Lohachara as the first sinking of an inhabited island caused by climate change, and suggests that 12 islands with a population 70,000 are in danger.
While the danger of rising seas appears real, islands disappear (and appear) in this deltaic region on the Bay of Bengal all the time, and it might be hard to pin this particular instance on the small sea level rise that has occurred so far. Indeed, Lohachara might be a char – the Bangladeshi name for the notoriously shifting and often temporary river deposits that land pressure forces desperate people in the region to live on.
April 11th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
[...] New York Times adds to reports of the disappearance of islands in the Sundarbans of Bengal, “among the world’s largest [...]