It was a gradual, regular loss. Lengthy earlier than the land started visibly retreating, the underwater basis of the seashore begins eroding first, says Mandeen. Inside 4 years of its building, the realm to the north of the breakwaters had misplaced all of its sandy seashores.

“Through the erosive course of persons are liable to dropping their houses, vegetation is destroyed, freshwater aquifers flip saline,” says Schiavina. “The online erosion or deficit would not seem to be a lot and would not matter ultimately, however the human loss does.”

The federal government responded to this erosion by constructing groynes – jetty-like buildings that jut out into the ocean perpendicular to the coast – and seawalls constructed from rock. The target of a groyne is to catch as a lot sand as potential to stop erosion. In order sand piles up on one facet of the construction, the opposite facet is open to the ocean and vulnerable to erosion, except this sand is replenished.

In 2003, the federal government constructed a 7km (4.3 miles) seawall constructed of boulders alongside the Puducherry coast, beginning on the harbour, with the intent to guard the town. It value 400 million rupees ($5.5m/£3.9m). People who might afford it began constructing these buildings too. In 2007, Vasudevan, the previous fisherman, constructed a concrete seawall in entrance of his property. Three years later, the ocean nonetheless engulfed his land. 

“Groynes are usually not constructed alone – they’re often part of what we name groyne fields,” says Schiavina. “Sea partitions are used for armouring the shoreline, the place the seawall acts as a man-made cliff. Each are solely boundaries and may worsen erosion, particularly on a shoreline such because the one alongside Puducherry and neighbouring Tamil Nadu and Auroville.”