As the recent pre-monsoon rains following the unprecedentedly sweltering summer flooded Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, Dr Muralee Thummarukudy, the well-known writer and expert on disaster prevention and ecology connected with the United Nations, made an interesting suggestion. When the Kerala High Court buildings and the KSRTC bus station in Ernakulam city are being shifted, we should build large water bodies in their places instead of filling them with new buildings. Urban floods can be prevented only through such steps as traditional drainage and sewage systems are no longer sufficient.

According to Thummarukudy, the current Director of the Bonn-based G20 Global Land Initiative Coordination Office of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), converting urban areas into “sponge cities” is the most suitable natural method now being universally recognised to control urban floods, harvest and conserve rainwater and also mitigate urban heat island conditions. Extreme heat, rising sea levels, high-intensity rains, floods, landslides, etc, will be routine phenomena to an increasing degree every year in most parts of the world. Mitigation and adaptation are the only options before us. Architect G Shankar points out that at the present rate of flooding and erosion caused by climate change and urbanisation, the entire Kerala state could go underwater by 2050. Let us request the honourable judges of the Kerala High Court order that a beautiful greenscape with a water body be built where the court complex is shifted from.

Kerala was once under water. It may be so again unless we change our ways on a war footing. Water will reclaim every inch of land it once occupied. We humans hasten this reclamation process through our mindless ways. Remember the 2018 floods in Kerala when almost every inch of land flooded a century ago (1924) came under water again? The completely inundated Cochin International Airport Ltd noted as the world’s first green airport and modern Kerala’s proud landmark, was a shuddering sight. Thummarukudy cites CIAL as a project that should never have been built on the vast wetlands that will be underwater again in another future flood.

Not that Kerala experts are unfamiliar with these challenges or concepts like the “sponge city”. In 2022, the Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) announced to explore options to transform Kochi into a sponge city. MM Sheeba, the GCDA senior town planner, spoke about Kochi being made the state’s first sponge city during a discussion on the Future of Kochi held as part of the two-day National Urban Conclave-Bodhi. She also........

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