Full Coverage: Oceans

01.05.2008 Environmental activist Sunita Narain offers a glimpse of what the future holds for coastal towns and villages as sea waters rise at a high rate. Climate change, rising salinity in waters and intense winds are eroding and depressing land at the same time in the Sunderbans, leaving people with no ways to survival.

30.04.2008 Villages in Orissa on the eastern coast of India are sinking into the sea. In last four months many families have been forced to flee as rising waters have submerged their homes and farmlands. Despite assurances from government, the displaced families are yet to be resettled.

24.04.2008 New research predicts a rise in sea levels three times higher than that estimated by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year. These findings, based on a model following accurate reconstruction of sea levels over past two millennia, were presented at a European Geosciences Union conference in Austria recently.

15.04.2008

09.04.2008 CARACAS, Apr 8 (IPS) - Trawl fishing is on its way out in Venezuela, amid demonstrations by artisanal fisherfolk who support the new law as amended by President Hugo Chavez.

14.03.2008 Melting ice from glaciers all over the globe has added more to the rise in sea levels than was previously projected, says the new findings published in a prestigious journal. An effective global emission control regime is the need of the hour to arrest this recession.

13.12.2007 Thousands of kilometers of protective embankments and dykes in Bangladesh’s southern coastal belt had been left severely damaged by the cyclone that hit the country in mid-November. People now face a risk of hunger if these protective walls are not repaired.

30.11.2007

23.11.2007 The World Bank has announced $250 million in aid for the recovery and rehabilitation of millions of Bangladeshis affected by Cyclone Sidr. Part of the funds will also be used to strengthen the country’s disaster mitigation systems.

16.11.2007 Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated as a powerful cyclone battered southern Bangladesh on November 16. Over two hundred have been reported dead, while officials warn of a rise in death toll.

14.11.2007 SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 14 (OneWorld) - Environmentalists are calling for an international ban on bunker fuel, a particularly noxious petroleum product used to power most ocean-going cargo ships, including those responsible for massive spills this week in the Black Sea and San Francisco Bay.

04.10.2007 India's first tsunami warning centre became operational on October 1st. Located at the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), at Hyderabad, the centre is now functioning 24/7. India’s southern coast was devastated by the Asian tsunami three years back.

26.09.2007 Global warming could impact one billion people, warned Rajendra K. Pachauri of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at the opening of the largest-ever gathering of world leaders on climate change. Heads of states, top officials, civil society and business leaders from over 150 nations attended the high-level meeting on 24 September.

12.09.2007 Millions of people living on the northern coast of the Bay of Bengal face the risk of giant, tsunami-triggering earthquakes, warns a report, published in Nature.

16.08.2007 COPENHAGEN, Aug 16 (OneWorld) - As Russia and certain other countries appear keen to explore natural resources in the seabed of the Arctic north, proponents of sustainable development are urging the United States to join global efforts to promote the responsible use of marine life and resources.

16.08.2007 India plans to expand its oceanography research, tapping into the wealth of the little-explored Indian and Southern Oceans. Exploring these oceans could yield bounties in terms of information and resources. Both oceans play an important role in the formation of the Indian monsoon and could also harbour submerged deposits of copper, nickel, manganese and cobalt.

07.08.2007 A new study in the journal ‘Nature’ says global warming due to human action is leading to changing precipitation patterns. Highly sophisticated computer models have been used to predict and confirm the change of weather – with heavy rains in some areas and severe drought in others.

15.07.2007 Climate experts say 2007 will be the second warmest year on record since the 1860s. Current floods in Pakistan and heat waves in China and Greece may be signs of further disruptions caused by global warming. The warmest year on record so far has been 1998.

13.06.2007 Melting ice and snow caps are leading to rising temperatures and sea levels. India will be severely affected, among other Asian countries, by reduced water availability for drinking and agriculture, hunger and forced migration.

05.06.2007 Home to the world's largest mangrove pool and famed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Sunderbans are under threat from climate change. Rising seas and shrinking mangroves will make Bangladesh and India's eastern state of West Bengal vulnerable to tsunamis and cyclones and may force migration of people.