Coastal Zones: Ecology and Climate Change Need Concerted Attention for Sustained Productivity

Abstract

Coastal ecosystem poses a delicate equilibrium between land and water masses amongst its different components but with high degree of vulnerability in spite of bountiful natural resources. The equilibrium is further under serious threat due to climate change and global warming, though on the other hand, it is significant that coastal marshes tend to sequester carbon continuously with increasing storage capacity and with time, and thus regarded as a valuable C sink per unit area, particularly in the tropics, to negate adverse impacts due to global warming. Planning for effective and sustainable development warrants specific attention to maintain the equilibrium. This will require adoption of integrated approach to soil and water management, in the first place, and through it or otherwise, necessary measures to conserve the ecology. Piecemeal approaches to reclaim location specific problems or interference with the hydrology of the rivers per se for short term gains for increase of productivity, disregarding completely the practices on integrated management of different intervention areas and thereby conserve the ecology in coastal plains, may offset the equilibrium, as experienced in different parts of the world, leading to such adverse impacts, such as seawater intrusion into inland areas, massive loss of mangroves, coral reefs, sea grasses and various other aquatic plant & animal species, sedimentation & erosion, tidal flooding, subsidence of land, etc. The influx of reckless application with fast increasing dose of nitrogen or other inputs resulting in nutrient imbalance through human activities in the adjoining inland and coastal areas are glaring examples leading to such phenomena as eutrophication and formation of dead end zones in the coastal water bodies. Policy approach for water budgeting of different water resources, preferably on watershed basis, with minimal or planned dependence on abstraction of the underground water should be an essential strategy to be drawn in order to ensure sustainable increase in crop water productivity as well as water productivity all along the coast.