Coastal Erosion and Seawalls in India

The west coast of India has tremendous coastal resources but is also an erosional hotspot. Significant coastal population and spotted infrastructure development meet severe environmental conditions like monsoons season, sea level rise, beach retreat, port construction or mangrove destruction in a complicated battle. 

In India, coastal erosion is becoming the subject of more and more focus and interest. While the solution in the past has been primarily seawalls, the local population is beginning to see that they often cause more problems than they solve. We wanted to highlight a short article recently featured in the Times of India by Professor Jayappa of Mangalore University. 

 

From Times of India: Sea walls are no solution to erosion: "Beaches belong to everyone. They are the playgrounds of waves of the sea. 'We should make efforts to preserve our beaches. Hence we should think of going for green walls instead of sea wall. Sand mining at sea shores should be completely banned,' said Prof Jayappa, department of marine geology, Mangalore University, on Monday."

"Removing sand and shells are also dangerous, from the angle of preservation of sea beaches. Jayappa observed our East coast is endowed with larger quantity of sediments than the Western Coast. 'We are spending over Rs 300 million only for dredging. Sea wall making is a money spinning business.'"

This is an argument that ASR uses a lot in educating people on the purpose and benefits of Kovalam Multi-Purpose Reef. In fact, one of ASR's founders is an Indian citizen and lives in Kerala. Our business witnesses the effects of severe coastal erosion on coastal populations everyday. When you're targeting your business towards sustainable coastal management solutions, we figure it makes sense to attack where the problems are worse.