The Hindu Business Line : Greenpeace campaign highlights coastline crisis

Kochi, April 13 Citizens, celebrities and politicians joined the Blue Alert Campaign organised by Greenpeace here to highlight what could be the coastline of the future, if the climate crisis was not prevented.

Kochi campaign is part of Greenpeace initiative organised in five climate vulnerable coastal cities – Mumbai, Kolkatta, Chennai and Panjim – seeking to demand that the country should take steps to prevent the humanitarian crisis and mitigate climate threat.

In Kochi, Dr K.S. Manoj, Parliament member, joined 200 people with Blue Alert bandanas to walk from the International Stadium till Marine Drive for the cause.

Mr Somnath Narayan, climate and energy campaigner from Greenpeace, said that India invests huge amounts in protecting its national boundaries from military incursions, but that it is ignoring the climate crisis that can redraw its coastline permanently and displace as many as 50 million people in the country.

Climate change

While climate change is the biggest threat facing humanity in the coming decades, India needs to recognise that mitigating the threat by building a low carbon economy is the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century, he said.

We need to position ourselves to take advantage of the emerging opportunities by proactively investing in the sustainable energy technologies of the future, with a view of being world leaders in them, he said.

The Blue Alert campaign in the last three weeks has engaged people through posting climate hazard signs, slapping eviction notices on buildings under threat of submergence and organising climate migrant kiosks.

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