Akshaya Kumar Sahoo THE ORISSA government has woken up to take damage control measures against the global warming related sea erosions at Satabhaya and Kanhupur villages in Kendrapara district as well as Puri and Konark beaches. For Puri and Konark, the government has decided to prepare a blueprint to construct seawalls to protect tidal waves of the Bay of Bengal frequently inundating parts of the two major tourist spots. Agriculture minister Surendranath Nayak, who recently visited the Puri and Konark beaches along with a high-level technical committee, said the Centre would be approached to bear the cost of sea embankment construction and if the latter expressed its inability to help, the state government would mobilise funds from its own sources for the purpose. As regards Satabhaya and Kanhupur, the state government has asked the district collector to identify suitable areas for relocating 483 families of the sea shore villages. The district collector has also been directed to take the opinion of the affected villagers as well as those living in the area about where they are to be shifted and furnish a report at the earliest. The sea has been advancing menacingly and has already gobbled up five clusters of seven villages under Satabhaya gram panchayat in Rajnagar tehsil of the district. While Gobindapur, Kharikula, Mahanipur, Kaunria and Sarapada have already gone under the sea within the last 40 years, Satabhaya and Kanhupur are waiting for the inevitable to happen. In a recent meeting, chief minister Naveen Patnaik took stock of the situation in Satabhaya and Kanhupur villages. It was decided in the meeting that the modalities of relocation will be worked out after receipt of a detailed report from the collector. The government intends to provide two acres of land, 10 decimal homestead plot, Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) houses and other facilities to those who are to be displaced. Environmentalist, however, find no wisdom in the state government's moves. "These are no effective measures nor can such steps bring permanent solutions to the sea erosion-related problems. We need to control the pollution caused by high volume of carbon dioxide released by coal-based thermal power plants and other industrial sources in the state,' says environmentalist Biswajit Mohanty. In fact, the state environment department and Centre for Environmental Studies, which recently organised a workshop on climate change, came out with a joint statement admitting that excessive presence of carbon dioxide is warming the planet and driving the global climate change. "It also becomes the cause of excessive thunderstorm and lightning,' the statement said. The statement further said: "Orissa is hit hard by global warming. Village after village in Kendrapara, Puri and Gopalpur areas are gradually vanishing due to frequent tidal inundation.' State environment director Bhagirathi Behera said that the government would conduct more awareness activities on climate change across the state by involving students of various schools, colleges and universities. Senior scientists, like Liaquat Ali, G.K. Pujari and Pravat Das, who participated in the workshop, advocated for cutting down carbon dioxide emission by increasing efficiency of existing thermal power plants by using clean coal technologies. According to environmentalists, Orissa, with a total expected installed capacity of 20,000 MW coal-based thermal station by 2012, will generate 152.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year to the atmosphere. This amount is enough to cause major environmental disaster in the country.