Ipsa Tripathy
Bhubaneswar: India’s climate discussion often focuses on forests, solar parks, and electric vehicles. Yet along the country’s long coastline, another powerful climate solution already exists. In tidal creeks, estuaries, and coastal wetlands, ecosystems such as mangroves and seagrasses quietly absorbs and store large amounts of carbon. Despite this, they are still treated as biodiversity zones or cyclone barriers rather than serious climate infrastructure.
This is a major gap in climate policy.
Across the world, the “blue carbon” ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes are drawing attention because of their ability to capture and store carbon for long periods of time. Coastal ecosystems trap organic matter deeply inside waterlogged soils where it remains stored for centuries, unlike land forests that keep much of their carbon above ground. Studies have shown that these ecosystems absorb carbon 3-5 times faster per unit area than tropical forests.
In India, this is not only an environmental issue, rather it is connected to economic security, disaster protection, and climate resilience. India’s 7500 km coastline faces increasing pressure from the rising sea levels, violent cyclones, rapid industrialisation, shrimp farming, and development of ports. At the same time, many coastal ecosystems are diminishing faster than they can be protected or even identified.
The situation is significant along India’s eastern coast. The delta regions of the Sundarbans and Bhitarkanika National Park show two different examples of coastal adaptation and climate protection.
The Indian Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, is often discussed in context to tiger conservation and climate migration. Its importance as a massive carbon storage system receives far less attention. The region stores huge amounts of carbon not only in the trees but also within centuries old layers of wet sediment.
The Sundarbans are also on the frontline of climate change. Cyclones such as Amphan and Yaas showed how much resilience these mangrove forests hold. They work like natural protective barriers. The places protected by mangroves have experienced lower storm surges and less destruction in comparison to exposed coastal regions.
Yet there is contradiction seen in India’s coastal strategy. The government has always spent heavily on concrete embankments and engineering projects, while mangrove restoration often remains limited to forestry or any disaster-management programmes. Despite being natural protectors with clear economic benefits, Mangroves are still viewed mainly as conservation spaces.
This challenge is even clearer in Odisha’s Bhitarkanika ecosystem. Compared to the Sundarbans, Bhitarkanika is often overlooked despite being one of India’s richest mangrove forests. Located in Brahmani-Baitarani delta, it acts both as a biodiversity hotspot and natural shield against cyclones along Odisha’s coastline. During Cyclone Fani in 2019, several reports showed how the nearby areas were protected by mangroves, experiencing weaker winds and less saline flooding than nearby exposed regions.
However, Bhitarkanika also highlights another major challenge that is the industrial pressure. Odisha’s coastline is rapidly developing into an industrial corridor filled with ports, petrochemical industries and other aquaculture projects. In many cases, mangroves are still treated as “unused coastal land” instead of valuable carbon ecosystems. When mangroves are destroyed, the carbon trapped in their oxygen-poor soils gets released back into the atmosphere, turning a carbon sink to a carbon source.
The irony is very clear. India is greatly invested in technologies to reduce emissions while at the same time damaging ecosystem that naturally absorb and store carbon.
Even less attention is given to India’s seagrass meadows. These underwater ecosystems found in regions like the Gulf of Mannar, Palk Bay, Lakshadweep, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, are difficult to be monitored, rarely noticed in public climate discussions. Yet seagrass meadows stabilize coastal sediments, support fisheries, and stores carbon in the seabed for hundreds of years.
One of the major problems, is that India’s climate governance still focuses on land-based ecosystems.
Forest carbon can be measured through tree cover and biomass estimates, but blue carbon calculation is more complicated. It requires a rigorous study on sediment, geospatial mapping, and long-term monitoring of underwater carbon deposits. Coastal systems are ignored from India’s carbon accounting systems because of these complexities. As a result, most of the carbon-market funding supports the afforestation projects, while the mangrove restoration struggles to attract the climate finance. This policy gap will soon manifest as an economic hardship.
All around the world, blue carbon credits are becoming more important as governments and companies are searching for reliable carbon offsets which is connected to biodiversity protection and climate adaptation. Countries like Indonesia, Australia and UAE are already committing heavily in coastal carbon accounting. India, despite having one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable coastlines, risks falling behind.
India’s eastern coast could instead become a model for a new type of climate development. The Sundarbans and Bhitarkanika should not be seen as only as protected forests, rather treated as strategic climate assets connecting to India’s long-term net-zero goals. Coastal communities could be trained to help in monitoring the carbon storage. Mangrove protection could be linked to carbon markets and disaster insurance systems. Port and industrial projects could also be required in supporting blue-carbon restoration as a part of environmental compensation policy.
Such a shift could contribute in changing the whole narrative of the national climate conditions. Conservation would never appear as a restricted development but as a long-term economic and environmental security.
There are already signs that these ideas would be fruitful. Community-led mangrove restoration in Tamil Nadu and seagrass transplantation efforts in Gulf of Mannar have shown that damaged coastal ecosystem is able to be recovered when consistent support is provided. The scientific knowledge already exists. The only challenge that surfaces is governance and implementation.
Another important issue could be migration.
In the Sundarbans, climate-related displacement has been affecting the local communities. Coastal erosion, rising salinity, and repetitive damages due to cyclones have forced the families to move inland. Protecting mangroves is therefore not only about reducing emissions but also includes the reduction of future climate displacement within India.
This makes the issue far more urgent.
India’s coastline is often managed separately. Forests come under one department, fisheries another, and disaster management somewhere else. But blue carbon ecosystems connect all these sectors at once. They store carbon, reduce coastal erosion, support fishing livelihoods, protect shorelines, and improve climate resilience simultaneously. Few climatic solutions provide so many advantages at once.
As India moves into 2070 net-zero target, the real challenge may not be technology but also environmental vision. For decades, coastlines have served as regions for industrial growth and extraction. The next stage of climate policy requires considering them instead as long-term ecological and economic assets. India’s climate future may lie in the tidal mud of Sundarbans, the estuaries of Bhitarkanika, and the seagrass beds hidden beneath coastal waters, that are quietly contributing to climatic work which policy has still not fully recognized.