Mumbai: 80% of Nariman point, Mantralaya areas will be submerged by 2050, predicts BMC chief – Mint

Mumbai municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal said areas like Nariman Point and state secretariat Mantralaya will be submerged in the next 30 years due to rising sea levels.

Speaking at the launch of the Mumbai Climate Action Plan and its website, the BMC chief said 70% of the city’s A, B, C, and D wards in south Mumbai will be under water due to climate change. He said that nature has been giving warnings, but if people do not “wake up” then the situation would turn “dangerous”.

“80% of the areas like Cuffe Parade, Nariman Point, and Mantralaya will be underwater…Means going to disappear,” Chahal added.

Chahal warned that it will not only be the next generation that will suffer from climate change but also the current generation.

He said that Mumbai is the first city in South Asia that is preparing its climate action plan and acting on it. “Earlier, we used to hear about climate change events like melting glaciers, but not directly affecting us. But now it has come to our doorstep,” he added.

Citing the frequent occurrence of cyclones, Chahal said that last year for the first time in 129 years, a cyclone (Nisarga) hit Mumbai, and thereafter in the last 15 months, there have been three cyclones. After that, on August 5, 2020, about 5 to 5.5 feet of water was accumulated at Nariman point. “There was no cyclone warning that day, but considering the parameters, it was a cyclone,” Chahal said.

Highlighting that the city has witnessed some extreme weather conditions recently, he said that the city faced a Tauktae cyclone in Mumbai and witnessed 214 mm rain on May 17, though the monsoon arrives here on June 6 or 7. Before June 9, Mumbai recorded 84% of the June rainfall and in July, 70% of the month’s average rainfall was received in just four days – from July 17 to 20, he said.

Data from across BMC’s 37 automatic weather stations (AWS) over the past 10 years suggests that on average, Mumbai has seen six heavy, five very heavy, and four extremely heavy rainfall days per year.

According to the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) classification, daily rainfall from 64.5 mm to 115.5 mm is considered ‘heavy’, 115.6 mm to 204.4mm ‘very heavy’, and more than 204.5mm is ‘extreme’.