Odisha to build India’s first resettlement colony for climate change victims

The model colony for the displaced villagers of Satabhaya would be built at Bagapatia in Kendrapara district at a cost of Rs. 22.5 crore in the first phase.

The Odisha government is planning to build India’s first resettlement colony for people affected by climate change, officials from the chief minister’s office (CMO) said on Sunday.

(HT Photo)

A senior official at the CMO said the model colony for the displaced villagers of Satabhaya would be built at Bagapatia in Kendrapara district at a cost of Rs. 22.5 crore in the first phase, five years after 530 families from a group of villages had to leave their homes after the rising sea devoured their homes.

“The sanctioned funds would be utilised for the construction of houses, drinking water, electricity connection, road and other facilities for the displaced people,” said the official who did not wish to be named.

He added that the state government is planning to provide agricultural land to the Satabhaya villagers who have lost their livelihood due to the coastal erosion.

“This would be the first colony for people displaced due to climate change in India,” he said. Meanwhile, Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik has also asked the tourism department to develop the Panchubarahi shrine in the locality as a tourist place.

‘Sata-bhaya’ is a group of seven villages that existed along the Kendrapara coast several decades ago, but went under the sea one by one due to coastal erosion.

In the 1960s, the villagers moved inland to create more new villages and named one of them Satbhaya in memory of the lost seven villages, however, the approaching sea continued to gobble up the villages and in 2011, Kanhupur was the last village to disappear.

Before the last village went under seawater, the state government had in 2008 started the process of relocating the people of the Satabhaya gram panchayat and shifted 571 families to the resettlement colony at Bagapatia, around 12 kilometres away, by 2018. However, the living conditions of the relocated families were no better due to the lack of basic amenities.

Satabhaya, adjacent to the Paradeep beach, suffered erosion due to the destruction of the natural sea barrier of dense mangrove forest following the construction of Paradip port in 1966.

Fortification of the Paradip area with stone walls to prevent sea erosion, generated sea waves that eroded the Satabhaya beach up north. According to the National Centre for Coastal Research, Odisha lost 28% of its 485-km-long coastline between 1999 and 2016 to seawater intrusion.