About South Asia Coast

South Asia’s five coastal countries (Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) account for less than 2 percent of the world’s total. Yet the low elevation coastal zones of these countries, with an area of about 160,000 km2, contain 135 million people—22.5 percent of the global population living in such zones. The coastal zones also contain about 40 percent of the economic activities in the region and most of its critical economic infrastructure.South Asia’s coastal regions are extraordinarily rich in ecological diversity. More than 8 percent of the world’s mangrove areas are in South Asia. The Sundarban delta is the world’s largest continuous stretch of mangroves. These—as well as the coral reefs of the Maldives, India, and Sri Lanka, and the dry land mangroves of Pakistan—support thousands of floral and faunal species.

This ecological richness, however, has been subjected to great pressure through over extraction of resources, enhanced pollution, and physical alterations in coastal ecosystems. Mangroves have been exploited for timber, fuel wood, and other purposes. For about 200 years, large mangrove areas have been cleared for agricultural activities and for shrimp farming, particularly in India and Pakistan. Mangroves, coastal wetlands, and other coastal habitats also have been severely affected by discharges of untreated industrial and domestic sewage, freshwater interceptions for irrigation, and dredging and re-suspension of contaminated silts. Oil pollution also increasingly threatens coral reefs, often located in areas where large-scale petroleum industries, tourism, and fishing industries flourish. Most of the shallow water coral reef habitats of Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and India have been severely damaged as a result of bleaching. The northern Indian Ocean is one of the 10 hotspots of the world’s threatened coral reef areas. The entire coral reef area in Bangladesh is under threat, as are most of the reefs in India (61 percent) and Sri Lanka (86 percent).