Climate's First Orphan: A film on sea erosion-prone Satabhaya

The Pioneer , Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Correspondent : Rajesh Behera
Kendrapara: The British High Commission in New Delhi has produced a 52-minute documentary film, Climate's First Orphan, which is based on the impact of climate change and global warming in Satabhaya, a sea erosion-prone village under Rajnagar block in Kendrapara district

In the film, Satabhaya was earlier a cluster of seven villages, five out of which namely Gobindapur, Mohanpur, Chintamanipur, Badagahiramatha and Kharikula have been wiped out by rising sea levels in the past three decades. Now, there remain only two villages, Satabhaya and Kanhupur, which are also on the verge of taking watery grave in the Bay of Bengal due to rising sea level.

According to the director of the film Nila Madhab Panda, an Oriya, cyclone is a "dress rehearsal" to global warming-induced climate change. In the short film, the director has shown the best example of global warming and climate change through the visual of a 30-year-old tube well, which in past was at the centre of the surviving village Kanhupur, but now it is at the edge of the sea. The researchers of the film said that the Bay of Bengal is rising by 1 mm every year by the global warming, accordingly 172 hectare of land will submerge within four decades in Satabhaya.

The film explores the devastated ecosystem of the seaside village, where the inhabitants have been transformed into ecological refugees with no place to go to and agriculture has destroyed as sea-water intrusion has made the land saline. Erosion has squeezed Satabhaya's original area of 350 square kilometres to 140 square kilometres.

The day is not far off when the whole area, having a population of about 3000, will be devoured by the sea, according to Panda.

The film was shot for a week in Satabhaya by a five member team including the director, camera man Ranjan Mishra, the project officer of Centre for Environmental Studies of Forest and Environment Department of State GK Pujari, Richard Mohapatra and Sheashis Das in last December.

 
SOURCE : The Pioneer ,Wednesday, June 18, 2008
 


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