Sand Artist highlights Global Warming threat

Puri, Mar 27: Non Government Organisation, Green peace joins hands with India's acclaimed sand artist to highlight the threat of global warming to the country's heritage sites in Orissa.

Internationally acclaimed sand artist Sudarshan Patnaik created theiniatures of famous heritage monuments, which included the Jagannath and Konark Temples in Orissa, the Shore temple at Mammalapuram in Tamil Nadu and the Gateway of India at Mumbai at the tidal zone of the Golden beach in Puri.

The 7 feet high sand sculpture was created for mounting awareness regarding increasing global temperature, which is consequently leading to a rise in sea level.

The Greenpeace foundation has already released a report to alert the Indian government and people about the possible future threats posed by global warming if urgent steps were not taken.

"This artwork is actually to symbolize all the coastal heritage sites in India that are under threat and that could go under water if global warming is not stopped. So it is a symbolic work that we've done here to raise awareness. It is not just people, not money but is everything that is at stake and that is the reason we need to fight global warming," said Vinuta Gopal, energy campaigner of Greenpeace.

The artwork used seven tonnes of sand and took two days to finish.

Patnaik, while narrating his first hand experience expressed fears regarding the threatening consequences, which would devastate the livelihoods of people on earth.

"I've been doing sand sculpting at the beach for the past 14 to 15 years and I noticed that the water level is rising and the quantity of sand has reduced a lot," said Patnaik.

Global warming threatens the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people on the Indian subcontinent, which according to experts is potentially one ofhe most seriously affected regions in the world.

Receding Himalayan glaciers could jeopardize water supplies for hundreds of millions of people and rising sea levels can become a menace to coastal Indian cities like Mumbai and Kolkata, as well as neighbouring Bangladesh, scientists warn.


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