THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India, Jun 08 (IPS) – Because the UN Ocean Convention (UNOC3) approaches, bringing renewed consideration to SDG 14 (Life Beneath Water) and the rights of ocean-dependent communities, India’s Vizhinjam coast highlights the environmental injustice and human price of unchecked coastal improvement.
Kerala’s conventional fishworkers—communities traditionally rooted to the ocean—are actually dealing with irreversible disruption because of the controversial Vizhinjam Port challenge.
Regardless of repeated rejections by a number of knowledgeable appraisal committees over extreme environmental issues, the Vizhinjam Port—Inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 2 Could 2025, as India’s first deep-water container transshipment hub—was authorized beneath questionable circumstances.
Specialists have raised severe issues concerning the compromised Environmental Impression Evaluation (EIA) course of for the Vizhinjam Port, calling it a “cut-copy-paste” job lifted from unrelated initiatives. The port’s viability research have been manipulated to miss ecological threats and suppress dissenting neighborhood voices.
In accordance with Vijayan M.J., Director of the Participatory Motion Analysis Coalition—India, “The primary viability research by Ernst & Younger clearly stated the port was not possible—environmentally or economically. So did the second. However each have been dismissed, and a 3rd research was commissioned with the clear expectation that it will declare the challenge viable. They didn’t even put the E&Y brand on the ultimate report—simply the names of the 2 researchers. That tells you one thing.”
Breaking the Coast: Ecological Injury and Fisher Exclusion
Regardless of these warnings, the Vizhinjam Port challenge moved ahead in a coastal area already burdened by intensive human intervention. As of 2022, Kerala’s 590-kilometer shoreline hosted a significant port at Kochi and intermediate ports in Thiruvananthapuram, Alappuzha, Kozhikode, and Thalassery. The shoreline was additional segmented by 25 fishing harbors, a number of breakwaters, and 106 groynes. Almost 310 kilometers of this shoreline had already been remodeled into synthetic stretches.
These cumulative constructions had already disrupted the pure rhythms of the coast, inflicting extreme erosion in some areas and sediment build-up in others—finally resulting in the lack of accessible seashores. To mitigate these impacts, the state put in extra seawalls and groynes, which solely additional interfered with the marine ecosystem and conventional fishing practices.
For Kerala’s fishworkers, this sample of exclusion and ecological injury just isn’t new.
The state of affairs intensified with the onset of Vizhinjam Port’s development, when lots of of native fishers have been abruptly knowledgeable that they might not fish close to their residence shores because of the imposition of transport lanes and designated no-fishing zones.
This sample of exclusion deepened when the state authorities handed over giant parts of the Thiruvananthapuram coast, together with Vizhinjam, to the Adani Group.
Amid rising protests in locations like Perumathura and Muthalappozhi—the place heavy siltation and repeated fisher deaths had triggered alarm—the federal government assured that Adani’s involvement would supply options, together with setting up embankments and often dredging the estuary to maintain it navigable. Nevertheless, these guarantees rapidly fell aside.
As Vipin Das, a fishworker from Kerala, recollects, “Adani took over the complete seaside and constructed an workplace complicated. Now, even stepping onto the shore requires his workplace’s permission.”
In accordance with native accounts, the corporate’s first transfer was to dismantle the southern embankment to permit barge entry to the port. This motion disrupted pure sediment flows and brought about a extreme blockage of the estuary. “When floodwaters started threatening close by houses, a JCB was rushed in to reopen the embankment—but it surely was already too late,” Vipin provides. “Adani’s entry didn’t resolve something—it solely worsened the disaster and destroyed our shoreline.”
From Biodiversity Hotspot to Hazard Zone
As soon as a biodiversity hotspot, Vizhinjam’s marine ecosystem boasted 12 reef programs and one of many world’s 20 uncommon ‘wedge banks’—a important oceanic zone close to Kanyakumari the place lots of of fish species fed and reproduced. Fishers keep in mind it as a “harbor of procreation,” teeming with over 200 forms of fish and greater than 60 aquatic species.
Nevertheless, intense dredging, altered wave patterns, and ongoing port operations have severely broken this fragile marine ecosystem. In 2020, Kerala recorded a 15 % decline in fish catch, and the numbers have continued to fall within the years since—threatening each biodiversity and the livelihoods that depend upon it.
The state’s response has been displacement disguised as compensation, providing ?10 lakh ($12,000) as a one-time fee to these keen to depart their houses as a substitute of addressing systemic erosion and catastrophe dangers, stated Vijayan.
The state of affairs additional took a catastrophic activate Could 24, 2025, when an enormous shipwreck occurred off the Vizhinjam coast.
Whereas authorities framed it as an remoted incident, environmentalists and coastal communities argue it was a catastrophe ready to occur—fueled by years of unregulated dredging and reckless port growth.
“The ocean is poisoned; individuals are saying to not eat fish,” shared Vipin. “Nevertheless it’s not simply rumors—there are chemical compounds, plastics, and gas. And we, who had nothing to do with this, are the primary to endure.”
With livelihoods already battered by monsoon storms and port restrictions, fishers now face public panic, polluted waters, and a poisoned meals chain. “This isn’t simply an accident—it’s a man-made catastrophe,” Vipin added. “The state should act swiftly to carry the corporate accountable and compensate the coastal communities who’re paying the best worth.”
Nevertheless, earlier this yr Vizhinjam Worldwide Seaport Ltd. advised the Enterprise and Human Rights Useful resource Centre that “Surroundings Clearance accorded to Vizhinjam Port has stood the check of authorized scrutiny, having gone by litigation earlier than the Nationwide Inexperienced Tribunal, New Delhi.”
It continued, “The Port operations and fishing/ancillary actions coexist all around the world and each actions are persevering with as per the foundations and rules prevailing within the democratic nation of India. It might even be famous that Vizhinjam port development has been carried out with finest practices, together with stakeholder engagement, taking the neighborhood into confidence.”
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