Climate
‘The story of sea-level rise is not a story about water. It is a story about people’
Prof. Dr. Jemilah Mahmood on why the world is dangerously underestimating a gathering health and justice crisis — and what must change.
When the Lancet Commission on Sea-Level Rise, Health and Justice published its landmark report Life at the water’s edge on 8 April 2026, it marked the first major effort to examine rising seas through a health-focused lens. Bringing together 26 international experts, the Commission was convened against a backdrop of accelerating coastal displacement, collapsing freshwater systems, and a growing recognition that the world’s most vulnerable populations are paying the price for a crisis they did not cause.
Among the 26 commissioners is Prof. Dr. Jemilah Mahmood, Executive Director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University, Malaysia — one of the region’s leading institutions on planetary and public health. A physician, humanitarian, and policy leader with decades of experience across Asia and beyond, Mahmood has been a consistent voice for justice-centred approaches to climate and health. Dipin Damodharan spoke to her about what the Commission’s findings mean for health systems, governments, and the role of science journalism in turning evidence into action.
‘This is a health and wellbeing crisis’
Sea-level rise is often discussed as an environmental issue. From a health perspective, how should we understand its real impact on human lives?
The framing of sea-level rise as primarily an environmental issue understates what is actually happening. At its core, this is a health and wellbeing crisis. It is already reshaping how people live in the most fundamental ways: what they eat, whether they can access clean water, how they sustain their livelihoods, and whether they can maintain any meaningful sense of mental stability and security.
The consequences run deeper than just the physical. Rising seas accelerate injury, disease, and displacement, but they also produce profound psychological trauma and the erosion of cultural identity, particularly for communities whose health is inseparable from land, coastlines, and the ocean itself. For many coastal and island populations, this is not simply a question of relocating to higher ground; it is the dismantling of entire ways of life that have sustained people for generations.
What makes sea-level rise especially serious as a health challenge is that it does not operate in isolation. It amplifies the effects of storms, intensifies heat, and deepens socio-economic inequality, meaning that existing health vulnerabilities become far worse rather than simply being joined by a new one.
What are the most immediate and long-term public health risks in vulnerable coastal regions?
The immediate risks are already being lived, not merely anticipated. Coastal flooding and storm surges kill, displace, and destroy the health infrastructure communities need to recover. When salt intrudes into freshwater supplies, the consequences for drinking water and basic hygiene outlast the flood itself by months or years. Blood pressure rise in communities affected by saltwater intrusion is well documented, affecting the highest at risk including pregnant women.
The longer-term risks are in some ways harder to address precisely because they accumulate quietly. Disrupted agriculture and fisheries translate into chronic food and nutrition insecurity, particularly for coastal populations whose diets depend directly on the sea. Permanent displacement strips away not just homes but ancestral land, social cohesion, and the intergenerational ties that underpin community health and resilience.
And then there is the mental health burden, which too often gets treated as secondary. For Indigenous and island communities, eco-anxiety, grief, and the loss of cultural identity are not soft concerns to be addressed once the physical damage is tallied. They are central to what sea-level rise actually does to human lives.
You describe this as a “justice crisis.” Who bears the greatest burden, and why does sea-level rise disproportionately impact those least responsible for climate change?
The communities bearing the greatest burden are those living in Small Island Developing States, low-lying coastal regions, and Indigenous territories, with concentration in the Western Pacific, where populations have contributed minimally to global emissions. In the worst-case scenarios, up to 410 million people are projected to be living below the high-tide line by 2100.
The injustice is not incidental; it is structural. These communities face displacement from their homes, their cultures, and their livelihoods, along with serious and compounding health consequences, without having meaningfully benefited from the fossil-fuel-driven economic growth that caused the crisis.
It is important to be precise about what justice means in this context. The Lancet Commission is explicit that this is not a conversation about charity or humanitarian generosity. It is about accountability, compensation, and rights. Affected communities are not supplicants waiting for wealthier nations to act out of goodwill; they are rights-holders who must be recognised as such, and crucially, they must have a genuine role in shaping the solutions. That shift in framing — from aid to accountability — is one of the most important things health journalists can help their audiences understand.
Are current health systems adequately prepared to respond to these impacts?
The honest answer is no. Health impacts from sea-level rise remain under-recognised, poorly integrated into national health planning, and largely treated as someone else’s problem. Adaptation efforts, where they exist at all, tend to prioritise physical infrastructure. The health, mental wellbeing, and cultural dimensions are consistently treated as secondary concerns, or rendered invisible entirely.
This is precisely why the Commission was formed. The scale of the challenge is being underestimated, and not just by governments. The financial sector and the international institutions specifically designed to hold the world accountable on climate change have been slow to reckon with what rising seas will actually cost in human health terms.
What policy interventions should governments prioritise?
The starting point is integration. Sea-level rise and its health consequences need to be written explicitly into national health strategies and climate adaptation plans, backed where possible by legislation and regulation. Voluntary commitments have a poor track record; legal and regulatory frameworks create accountability.
Community-led and Indigenous-informed adaptation must be resourced, not just acknowledged in policy documents. Local knowledge and local priorities are not a soft add-on; they are often the most reliable guide to what will work in a given context.
There also needs to be honest policy provision for the hardest cases: legal, financial, and institutional mechanisms to support protection, compensation, and where it becomes unavoidable, managed retreat from the shoreline. This is politically difficult, but pretending it is not necessary helps no one.
Finally, these policies must be fair across generations. The decisions made now will determine the conditions into which children and those not yet born will arrive. That is not a rhetorical flourish; it is a genuine policy obligation that should shape how governments evaluate every intervention they consider.
Given the transboundary nature of climate impacts, how important is international collaboration?
It is not just important; it is irreplaceable. Migration driven by displacement, disruptions to global food chains, the spread of infectious disease, the destabilisation of regional economies — these are not problems that stop at a coastline or a customs post. They require regional and global responses to match.
We are having this conversation at a moment when nationalism is rising, when multilateral frameworks are under pressure, and when misinformation and disinformation are actively undermining public understanding of the science and the stakes. That combination is dangerous, and it makes the case for strengthening international cooperation more urgent, not less.
The countries and communities most affected by sea-level rise are largely those least responsible for causing it and least equipped to manage it alone. An international architecture that fails to support them is not just morally inadequate; it is strategically shortsighted, because the consequences of inaction will eventually reach everyone.
I want to leave you with one thought. The story of sea-level rise is not a story about water. It is a story about people: about whose lives are considered expendable, whose knowledge is valued, whose children inherit a liveable world, and whose do not. We have the science. We have the solutions. What we have lacked is the sustained, courageous, human-centred storytelling that turns understanding into action. That is where you come in.
This is the digital version of the interview published in the May–June issue of Education Publica magazine, the print magazine division of EdPublica. The magazine is available on Magzter.
Climate
Western Ghats ESA: Centre Reissues Draft for 7th Time Amid Standoff
The Centre has reissued the Western Ghats ESA draft for the seventh time, with the proposed 56,825.7 sq. km area unchanged. The move highlights the long-running standoff with six States over ecological protection, development and the boundaries of the proposed ESA.
The Centre has reissued its draft notification proposing an Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) across the Western Ghats for the seventh time in more than a decade, as differences with the six Western Ghats States over the boundaries of the proposed zone remain unresolved.
The Union Environment Ministry issued the fresh draft on July 27, 2026, after the previous draft lapsed on the same day without being finalised. The new notification will remain open for public objections and suggestions for 60 days before the Centre considers issuing a final notification.
The proposed ESA covers 56,825.7 sq. km across Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. However, there are no substantive changes in the proposed area, State-wise extent or regulatory provisions compared with the draft issued in July 2024.
The latest reissue therefore highlights the central problem that has kept the proposal unresolved for years: the Centre and the States have yet to agree on which villages and areas should be brought under ecological protection.
What Will the ESA Restrict?
If finalised, the notification would prohibit mining, quarrying and sand mining, along with new thermal power plants, certain industries and large construction projects within the proposed ESA. Activities such as hydropower generation would be regulated.
The restrictions have been a major concern for the six States, which have raised questions about their implications for agriculture, plantations, infrastructure and development.
The notification states that an expert committee constituted in 2022 is continuing to examine objections raised by State governments, including concerns over “the correct names and area of villages to be included in the ecologically sensitive area”.
The disagreement is therefore not over whether the Western Ghats are ecologically important, but largely over where protection should apply and what activities should be permitted within those areas.
Why the Western Ghats Matter
The Western Ghats stretch along India’s western coast and are recognised as one of the world’s important biodiversity hotspots. Geologically, they are among the oldest mountain systems in the world, formed during the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana, and are estimated to be around 150–200 million years old, far older than the Himalayas. This long evolutionary history has contributed to their exceptionally high levels of endemism, supporting a rich concentration of plant and animal species found nowhere else.
The mountain range also plays a crucial role in regulating the region’s water systems. Several major rivers originate in or are fed by the Western Ghats, making the landscape important for drinking water, agriculture and livelihoods across peninsular India.
The ecological significance also intersects with growing concerns over environmental degradation and disaster vulnerability. Parts of the Western Ghats have experienced recurring floods, landslides and extreme rainfall events, particularly during intense monsoon spells.
This makes land-use decisions in ecologically fragile mountain landscapes increasingly significant. The ESA proposal is intended to restrict activities that can cause environmental degradation, but States and local communities have repeatedly raised concerns about how such restrictions would affect people living and working in these areas.
Kerala’s Proposed ESA Remains Unchanged
Kerala accounts for 9,993.7 sq. km of the proposed ESA. The figure is lower than the 13,108 sq. km recommended for Kerala by the high-level working group headed by K. Kasturirangan. Kerala subsequently conducted its own field verification exercise, following which the proposed ESA area within the State was reduced.
In Wayanad, the latest draft retains the 13 villages across Mananthavady, Sulthan Bathery and Vythiri taluks that were included in the previous draft.
Karnataka has the largest proposed ESA area, followed by Maharashtra and Kerala.
A Dispute Dating Back to 2011
The debate over protection of the Western Ghats dates back to 2011, when the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel headed by ecologist Madhav Gadgil recommended treating the entire 1.29 lakh sq. km mountain chain as ecologically sensitive, with different levels of protection.
The recommendation faced opposition from the States over concerns that extensive environmental restrictions could affect development and livelihoods.
The Centre subsequently appointed a high-level working group headed by K. Kasturirangan to review the proposal. The group recommended designating about 37% of the Western Ghats, covering 59,940 sq. km of natural landscape, as an ESA.
Kerala later carried out its own field verification, reducing the proposed area in the State from 13,108 sq. km to 9,993.7 sq. km.
Since then, the proposal has gone through multiple rounds of consultations, revisions and draft notifications. Yet, more than a decade later, the Centre and the six States have not reached an agreement on the precise boundaries.
The latest notification is therefore less a revision of the government’s proposal than another attempt to move forward with a process that has remained unresolved for years.
The Centre has now opened another 60-day window for objections and suggestions. The outcome will determine whether the latest draft can finally move towards a final notification or whether the Western Ghats ESA proposal will enter another round of consultations.
Climate
Assam Floods: Nagaland Rain, Swollen Rivers Drive Flooding
Assam’s flood situation has worsened, with 75 deaths and more than 3.3 lakh people affected across seven districts. Heavy rainfall in Nagaland triggered a rapid rise in Assam’s tributaries, while high Brahmaputra levels worsened the flooding across Upper Assam.
For families across Upper Assam, the latest flood has brought homes surrounded by water, crops submerged and livestock moved to safer ground. Seven people drowned in Sivasagar on Tuesday, taking Assam’s flood death toll to 75. As of July 28, 3,32,639 people across 622 villages had been affected and 45,342 hectares of crop area submerged, according to the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA).
The worst-hit districts of Assam’s flood are Sivasagar, Charaideo, Golaghat, Jorhat, Nagaon, Sonitpur and Kamrup Metropolitan. Charaideo has the highest number of affected people, followed by Sivasagar and Jorhat.
For families dependent on farming, however, the crisis will continue after the water recedes. A destroyed crop can mean a lost season’s income; damaged livestock, homes and farmland can make recovery harder.
Nearly 40% of Assam is Flood-Prone
Assam’s flood is not unusual. The state’s Water Resources Department estimates that 31.05 lakh hectares, or 39.58% of Assam’s total area, is flood-prone—nearly four times the national proportion of about 10.2%.
A 2026 study on Assam’s flood vulnerability in the Brahmaputra Valley also uses the figure to illustrate the Assam’s flood exposure. But exposure alone does not determine the damage. Household income, dependence on agriculture, housing, access to services and the ability to recover all shape how severely families are affected.
Heavy Rain Upstream Triggered the Latest Surge
The immediate trigger for the current flooding was heavy rainfall in neighbouring Nagaland and parts of Assam. Rain in Nagaland’s hill districts generated rapid runoff into Assam’s river system, raising tributaries including the Dikhow, Disang and Dhansiri. The already high Brahmaputra added to the problem by restricting how quickly these tributaries could drain into the main river.
The Assam Water Resources Department notes that flooding can become particularly severe when tributaries rise at the same time as the Brahmaputra.
So, the current crisis is not simply a case of the Brahmaputra overflowing. Heavy upstream rainfall triggered the surge; swollen tributaries carried the water into Upper Assam, while high Brahmaputra levels worsened drainage.
For farmers, the Losses Outlast the Flood
The 45,342 hectares of submerged cropland represent immediate agricultural losses. For farmers, those losses can mean months without income and fewer resources to prepare for the next season.
Floods can also kill livestock, damage homes and equipment, deposit sand on fields and accelerate riverbank erosion. When farmland itself disappears, recovery becomes even harder.
Assam’s Flood: Relief Measures Taken
As of July 28, 81 relief camps were sheltering more than 32,000 displaced people, while relief distribution centres were operating across affected areas.
The state government has announced ₹9 lakh for each family that lost a member, including ₹4 lakh in ex-gratia assistance and ₹5 lakh from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund. More than one lakh severely affected families will receive ₹15,000, while students in the worst-hit districts will receive book grants.
The assistance can help families meet immediate needs. But compensation cannot prevent another flood from causing similar losses.
What Can Reduce the Damage?
Since Assam cannot control heavy rainfall in neighbouring states, better preparation upstream and faster action downstream are critical. Real-time monitoring of rainfall and river levels in Nagaland and other upstream catchments can provide earlier warnings. Those warnings must reach villages quickly, with clear instructions on evacuation routes and safe shelters.
Flood-prone communities also need safer housing, accessible evacuation centres and infrastructure designed around local flood levels. Protecting livelihoods through crop insurance, livestock support, emergency credit and flood-tolerant farming can reduce the financial shock.
Flood management also needs to follow the river system rather than administrative boundaries. Rainfall in an upstream catchment can quickly affect communities hundreds of kilometres downstream.
The Losses That Remain.
Assam’s flood follows multiple flood waves in 2025, with the last recorded wave continuing into October. That matters because households may still be recovering from one flood when another arrives. A lost crop, dead livestock or eroded farmland can leave a family with fewer resources to face the next season. With 39.58% of Assam’s land already classified as flood-prone, the challenge is not simply getting people through this year’s flood. It is reducing the losses that families carry from one flood season to the next.
Climate
Monsoon Intensifies Across 10 States as IMD Issues Heavy Rain Alert
The southwest monsoon is set to intensify across India as a Bay of Bengal depression strengthens, prompting heavy rain alerts for more than 10 states. With many regions already affected by floods and landslides, the fresh spell of rainfall could worsen flooding, disrupt daily life and increase disaster risks.
The southwest monsoon is set to intensify across large parts of India over the next few days as a depression over the northwest Bay of Bengal strengthens, prompting the India Meteorological Department (IMD) to issue heavy rainfall alerts for more than 10 states.
The weather system is expected to bring heavy to extremely heavy rainfall across eastern, central, western and northern India, increasing the risk of floods, landslides and waterlogging. The fresh spell of rain comes at a time when several states are already dealing with the impacts of an active monsoon, making them more vulnerable to further weather-related disasters.
Bay of Bengal Depression to Strengthen Monsoon
According to the IMD, a low-pressure area over the northwest Bay of Bengal and adjoining Odisha–West Bengal coast is likely to intensify into a depression before moving west-northwest across Odisha, Chhattisgarh and central India.
A depression is a well-organised low-pressure weather system that forms over warm ocean waters. During the southwest monsoon, the Bay of Bengal is the primary region where these systems develop. As they move inland, they transport large amounts of moisture from the sea, producing widespread rainfall over several states. Although weaker than cyclones, monsoon depressions are among the most important drivers of India’s seasonal rainfall.
The IMD has forecast isolated extremely heavy rainfall over Odisha and Chhattisgarh, while heavy to very heavy rainfall is expected across parts of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Gangetic West Bengal, Konkan and Goa. Widespread rainfall is also likely across the northeastern states, including Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura.
Fresh Rain Could Worsen Existing Floods
The latest depression arrives after several weeks of intense monsoon activity across the country. States such as Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand have witnessed recurring landslides and flash floods, while Assam has experienced repeated flooding as the Brahmaputra and its tributaries swelled following continuous rainfall. Parts of Gujarat, Maharashtra and central India have also reported flooding and waterlogging after successive spells of heavy rain.
Meteorologists say the concern is not only the amount of rain expected but also where it will fall. Much of the landscape in these regions has already become saturated, reducing its ability to absorb additional rainfall.
When soil reaches its storage capacity, fresh rainfall flows directly into streams and rivers instead of soaking into the ground. This increases surface runoff, causing rivers to rise more rapidly and raising the risk of flash floods and urban flooding. In hilly regions, continuous rainfall also weakens slopes, making landslides more likely.
Growth of Climate Challenge
Scientists increasingly describe situations like these as compound weather events, where one weather event amplifies the impact of another. A fresh spell of heavy rain falling over flood-affected areas can prolong flooding, delay recovery and increase damage to homes, roads and public infrastructure.
Climate change is expected to make these risks more pronounced. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the atmosphere can hold about 7% more moisture for every 1°C rise in temperature, increasing the potential for intense rainfall during monsoon weather systems. Studies by the India Meteorological Department and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology have also reported an increase in short-duration extreme rainfall events across parts of India over recent decades.
Authorities Urge Vigilance
The IMD has advised residents in flood- and landslide-prone areas to closely monitor weather updates and follow local advisories. Fishermen have been warned against venturing into the Bay of Bengal and adjoining parts of the Arabian Sea due to rough sea conditions.
State disaster management agencies are also monitoring river levels, reservoir inflows and vulnerable districts as the depression moves inland.
While the active monsoon is expected to replenish reservoirs and support the ongoing kharif cropping season, the latest depression highlights the growing challenge of managing consecutive extreme rainfall events. For communities already affected by floods and landslides, the coming days will test the resilience of infrastructure, disaster response systems and local preparedness as another round of heavy rain sweeps across the country.
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