Unusually heavy rainfall years have been becoming more frequent in recent decades in India. As a result, people are also experiencing more frequent occurrences of floods in several parts of the country including Chennai. These are considered climate change-induced floods/disasters. But the key question remains. Are we hiding behind climate change for all the blunders made so far? Chennai suffered the serious impacts of floods in 2005, 2015 and, again, in 2023. Although each one of these floods is unique in their own way, the impact has been devastating, increasing year after year. The flood in 2023 is considered the worst in the past 47 years. But the main concern is whether we have learned any lessons from past flood events. Have we resorted to corrective measures?
A few pertinent questions arise in this context: To what extent are the floods that occur due to historical human errors or blunders? To what extent has conventional wisdom followed by the State helped mitigate floods and droughts? What are the lessons learnt from the past extreme events? What should be done to make the city of Chennai flood resilient? And, how does one convert disaster into opportunity so that the city of Chennai also gets abundant water supply?
What is more, the coastal city of Chennai has also got to deal with coastal floods and climate change and the consequent impact of seawater rise. The key issue, therefore, is to highlight the necessity to decode Chennai’s urban and peri-urban hydrology, its ecosystem in its totality, and make meaningful and scientific interventions not only towards flood mitigation but also towards handling droughts and in building climate-resilient strategies for Chennai and Chennai Metropolitan Area (CMA).
