“Vizhinjam was once known as the harbour of pro-creation,” Father Michael, parish priest of Lady of Good Voyage Church in Vizhinjam, Kerala, told Mongabay-India. But today, the reality is different.
Vizhinjam is a coastal region approximately 16 kilometres south of Trivandrum, stretched between Kollam and Kanyakumari in the southern district of Kerala. The seabed in this area is full of rock formations, sandy bottom ridges, floor slopes and sloping ridges, making the space a rich breeding ground for mussels and a variety of marine organisms. At least 12 unique reef systems have been discovered here, say researchers from Friends of Marine Life, an indigenous coastal community non-profit composed of scientists, scuba divers and fishers in south India. In 2016, they carried out a survey of the sea bed of Vizhinjam, to document the biodiversity of the region. Kumar Sahayaraju, a marine biotechnologist, who was part of the team, told Mongabay-India that the region is “like a forest in the sea.”
“The sea bed is full of sessile and sedentary marine life. There are at least 12 different reefs, forming the perfect habitat for fish to live and breed. And now they don’t have a home,” he said. Father Michael said, “fishers from all the 20 coastal villages surrounding us would come here during the monsoon months to fish.”
This ecologically rich region is also the site of the Vizhinjam International Sea Port, an ‘international transhipment deepwater multipurpose seaport’ that is being developed by Adani Ports as a public-private partnership (PPP) project on a design, build, finance, operate and transfer (DBFOT) basis. The PPP structure is based on a landlord model where land will be owned by the Government of Kerala (GoK) through Vizhinjam International Seaport Limited (VISL), a special purpose vehicle set up to manage the port development.
The project has been in the making for a long time. The port’s development was envisaged by the Kerala government in 1999 and the site was chosen primarily because of the geomorphological features of this region — Vizhinjam has a natural bay, a natural depth of 18-20 metres that would allow the parking of cape-size vessels without additional dredging. And it is only about ten nautical miles from the international shipping route of Malacca strait, one of the busiest shipping channels. Capesize vessels are large-sized bulk carriers typically above 150,000 deadweight tonnage (DWT). Due to their large dimensions and deep draughts, they are suitable to serve only large ports with deep water terminals in the world.
The site seemed like the perfect pit stop for cargo vessels passing by. It is designed to cater to container transhipment besides multi-purpose and breakbulk cargo. The private partner, Adani Vizhinjam Port Private, manages the port including the civil infrastructure, supra-structure (terminal) and provides cargo handling services to the port users.
The construction of the project started in 2015 and it involved reclaiming 130 acres of land from the sea, building a new harbour, a jetty with pillars to allow the parking of capesize vessels, breakwaters running up to three kilometres, and dredging of shipping channels. According to the master plan, the total requirement of the land for the project is about 238 hectares. Of the total land required for the project, about 30 percent of the land is to be used for real estate development in the form of hotels, commercial buildings and residential apartments.
Not that there wasn’t any protest against it but after going through a series of objections and court cases filed by environmentalists and citizen activists, the port received all clearances and commenced construction on December 5, 2015. It is now slated to be commissioned by October 2023.
For the people of Vizhinjam, life has been divided into two parts – before the port, and after the port. They say it wasn’t as if everything was rosy before the port was constructed. They were sold the idea of a dream destination, that the port will bring them new opportunities, a better, more secure future. But the reality could not be further from this dream.
According to the local people and experts, who are working in the area, Vizhinjam and its neighbouring villages have, over the last seven years, witnessed a steep fall in marine biodiversity, a decline in fish catch, loss of thousands of livelihoods, a rise in the number of fisher deaths, coastal erosion, uncomfortable rehabilitations, and a general sense of misery amongst its populace. For the people, from a harbour of pro-creation, it has become a harbour of desolation…