India has 5,264 large dams and another 437 dams are currently under construction, according to the Central Water Commission (CWC). Of these, the highest--2,354--are in Maharashtra, followed by Madhya Pradesh (906) and Gujarat (632). These dams starve the coasts of sediments that the rivers would otherwise carry, disturbing the natural equilibrium.

Then, there are 13 major ports, 46 fishing harbour and 187 minor ports on the coast for the building and maintenance of which sediments are regularly removed. This sediment is rarely ever returned to the coast.

All this has left India’s coasts vulnerable to the full impact of climate change. “Climate change is making weather systems in the Bay of Bengal erratic,” said M.V. Ramana Murthy, director of NCCR. “We have some evidence for sea level rise. The Lakshadweep lagoons, which are enclosed water bodies, are also getting eroded because of sea level rise.”

Global warming will cause the sea levels to rise well beyond the year 2100. This rise could be as much as the height of a 500 ml bottle of coke to the height of four such bottles put together if global warming raises temperatures by 1.5 degree Celsius. If the Earth warms beyond this, the rise in sea level could be even more, according to the latest report by United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in October this year.

Rising sea levels are predicted to disproportionately affect fishermen like Karvi and farmers owning fields along the coast.

In the past two years, Karvi’s entire home was ravaged by the sea. Even as his parents refused to move, Karvi and his siblings moved away with their families in tow. They now live in rented homes.

With the little money they had, they constructed a two-room mud home with no windows and a roof so low that one has to bend to enter, where their parents lived till their death in 2017.