The name of the island is Lohachara not that many of us are going to remember it for long. We'll probably recall it as that little island off India, the first once inhabited island to disappear from the surface of the earth due to rising sea levels attributed to global warming.
Lohachara was a small island that supported a population of 10,000 in the Bay of Bengal near where the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers meet the sea. It is believed that other islands in the area will soon also be submerged displacing some 70,000 more islanders.
Several uninhabited islands have disappeared in recent years, notably in the South Pacific. Lohachara is unique because it was inhabited.
While there is some debate as to whether it was rising seas or standard ocean currents that ate away at the island, either way the inhabited island did wash away. It is perhaps worth noting however that it happened 22 years ago. This has no bearing on the cause nor on the signifigance, but it is certainly worth being aware of if you engage in any discussions about the event.
ReplyDeleteI did some checking and it seems that Lohachara did only recently submerge. The sources are The Independent, a main Tamil web page and Jadavpur University, Calcutta. You might be thinking of some other island that washed away. Lohachara seems to have been inundated by rising waters, not eroded or washed away.
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