Climate Adaptation Strategies for Addressing Sea-Level Rise and Building Coastal Resilience in Urban Areas: Lessons from the Metropolitan City of India

Vulnerability of coastal areas to sea level rise is a major issue, which has got attentiveness lately. Coastal areas face numerous threats and stresses associated to sea level rise and variability. Thirteen of the world's twenty biggest cities are in coastal area, and more than a third of the world's inhabitants live within hundred miles of coastline. Changed frequencies and intensities of severe weather, amalgamated with sea level rise, are estimated to have frequently antagonistic outcomes on natural and human systems. Coastal communities are exceedingly susceptible to sea level rise impacts, largely because of three causes, high resource reliance, high exposure and restricted adaptive capacity. India has a 7,517 km elongated shoreline with numerous low-lying and densely inhabited areas with approximately 260 million people living within 50 km of the coastline. The upsurge in sea level in the north of the Indian Ocean has been witnessed to fall in the range of 1.06 - 1.75 mm per year in the earlier century. A network of infrastructures housed in these highly vulnerable areas. It is exceedingly appropriate to start climate proofing infrastructure and services, given the climate sensitive nature of the existing infrastructure techniques in the coastal areas. It could be sustained and succeeded in such a way that it is equipped to resist sea level rise impacts that it may be exposed to during its operational lifetime. Climate Adaptive capacity is closely associated to social and economic development but is erratically distributed through and within societies. This research paper discusses on application of ocean-based approaches for climate adaptation strategies and building coastal resilience for the coastal communities in the Visakhapatnam metropolitan city of India. It summarizes with suitable policy and institutional reform, capacity building and enhanced knowledge management with effectiveness, equitability and safety of ocean-based approaches towards escalating the resilience and adaptive capacity of the coastal communities to present and impending sea level rise to contribute towards the mitigation and adaptation goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Keywords: Climate adaptation, Sea level rise, Coastal resilience, Coastal communities, Infrastructure Assessment, Climate resilience planning