Troubled past, turbulent future: Life in the Sundarbans, the front line of climate change

The Sundarbans is the largest mangrove forest in the world. A maze of tidal waterways, mudflats and small islands, shaped by the ebb and flow of the Bay of Bengal, it stretches across 10,000 sq km of the India-Bangladesh border.

The Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers all meet the sea here, forming a rich habitat for Bengal tigers, spotted deer, saltwater crocodiles, fishing cats, monitor lizards and a wide variety of birds and fish.

What is sometimes overlooked is that millions of people also reside here. Behind the famous biodiversity lies a complex history of human dispossession, migration and climate adversity that shapes these people and threatens their existence.

The Sundarbans has long been a site of resource extraction and exploitation, from Mughal settlements and Portuguese smugglers to East India Company rule. By the late 18th century, colonial rulers began clearing vast tracts of the mangrove forests for agriculture, with timber production displacing ecosystems and communities. Today, mangroves are still being lost due to a variety of factors including climate change and overexploitation, making the Sundarbans even more vulnerable.

Communities of Dalit and Adivasi make up the majority of the population. Locals told me how their ancestors migrated as early as the 1820s from the Chota Nagpur Plateau in eastern India, nearby towns, and parts of eastern Bengal.

Both Dalits and Adivasis are historically oppressed communities who face ongoing discrimination. Caste discrimination against the Dalits has led to atrocities such as the Marichjhapi Massacre in 1979. While Adivasi communities only arrived in the Sundarbans after being forcibly relocated by the British and colonial-era landlords, who needed labour to clear the forest.

As a result, these communities have lived, adapted and protected this mangrove ecosystem for centuries, yet remain largely invisible in conservation frameworks that prioritise wildlife over human rights. The Sundarbans is often portrayed as largely uninhabited, but it is home to 7.2 million people. These people now experience more frequent and destructive cyclones and flooding, as well as riverbank erosion caused by the rising sea and, as a result, increased salinisation of fresh water.

Life in the Sundarbans is labour-intensive, harsh and, thanks to the tigers, crocodiles and venomous snakes – often dangerous. Fishing and agriculture have been the two main forms of work for a long time but now climate change is taking its toll.

During my visit, a fisherfolk family told me they lost half their land in 2020 to rising sea levels. Sadly, they are not alone. Since the 1960s, 210 sq km of Sundarbans land has been lost to the rising sea.

Farmers told me they cultivate rice in paddies, vegetables, fruits such as watermelon and lately pulses (moong daal). The cultivating period is largely from July to November and harvesting takes place from December to February. From March to May the land remains fallow.

Locals said farming has become more and more challenging. Older generations shared stories about difficult but prosperous harvest cycles. Growing traditional crops becomes harder each year, damaging livelihoods and food insecurity.

“The water was sweet [here] before,” one farmer told me in the village of Namkhana, the gateway to the Sundarbans. “We could grow rice, and vegetables easily and the yield was good. Now… the water has become saline. It ruins our crops.”

Sundarbans and its residents are surviving in severe environmental stress and anxiety. The locals I spoke to recalled the devastation caused by Cyclone Aila in 2009, which destroyed 778 km of mud embankments that protected fields and aquaculture ponds from saltwater intrusions.

At the time, a project worth Rs 50 billion ($570 million) was proposed to rebuild the British-era embankments, but 10 years later only 15% of the project had been completed. When the more intense Cyclone Amphan hit in 2020, the region was once again devastated. Some 250 people died and the environmental losses were huge.

In the Indian portion of the Sunderbans, ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss costs Rs 6.7 billion ($147 million) per year, equivalent to 5% of the region's GDP in 2009, according to a 2014 World Bank study. “Floods are common here,” one local told me. “Every year the sea is so fierce it breaks the bandh.”

Bandh means embankments. Here they are supposed to be installed and maintained by the local government, though around the coastline all that is seen are incomplete or broken structures.

One farmer said floods last year killed freshwater fish in two of the ponds in his village. “We saw all the fish die and their eyes turning hazy within minutes of the flood. We had no fish for consumption that whole season,” he said.

Another farmer said soil in the Sundarbans is now too muddy for cultivation because of the rising salt content. Salt is known to lower the drainage capacity of soils.

Some farmers have decided that fishing and fish farming offer better sources of income even though they are also impacted by climate change. “At least there are still fish to catch,” one said. “There is less and less land to grow with each passing year.”

The rise of commercial seafood farming – mainly crab and shrimp – has brought its own problems, however. To walk around the villages is to see many pond-like structures used for aquaculture. Mangroves are cleared to construct these, further weakening defences.

The Sundarbans Tiger Reserve, a tourist attraction that will soon be expanded, brings yet more problems for local fishers. Designed to protect the endangered Bengal tiger, it currently covers over 2,585 sq km in West Bengal. Of this, 885 sq km acts as a buffer zone, and is the only area small-scale fish farmers are allowed to operate in. If they cross into the rest of the area, called the “core zone”, their boats are likely to be seized.

Small-scale fisherfolk are fighting another battle on the coastlines. Fish workers said the number of trawlers has sharply increased, reducing their catch. One told me: “I have been fishing for 30 years here, before that my father. We could catch 100 kg of fish in a season, but now I am lucky if it's even 25 kg.”

Over 300 species of fish have been recorded in the mangroves. The small-scale fishers and fish farmers are natural custodians of these water bodies. One farmer said: “We don't catch small fishes, we know where the breeding grounds are, we place our catch far away from there.”

Women fish workers who I had the chance to meet shared a slightly different experience. They told me they make up half of the workforce, if not more, but remain under-represented in labour discussions, collective bargaining efforts or are represented tokenistically for political gains.

Then there is the annual fishing ban. In India, the government bans fishing for two months each year to help stocks regenerate. During this period, local and state governments provide welfare to affected fishers. But in West Bengal, where fishing is restricted from mid-April to mid-June, this does not happen. After protests, the local government announced it had introduced its own scheme in 2019. But locals told me they have not received any support funds since the announcement.

In the wake of recent climate disasters like Cyclone Amphan, however, grassroots organising has emerged, with local groups asserting their rights to land, livelihood and dignity. During my visit I was told that across West Bengal, 8,000 small-scale fishworkers organised a protest against repressions by local governance bodies. The group held a press conference demanding recognition of small-scale fish workers and for smooth processing of licence applications. They say the process is currently riddled with corruption and delays.

One local leader, who is part of a small-scale fish worker union, told me: “The future of the Sundarbans and its inhabitants cannot be fulfilled by tokenistic approaches to conservation or short-term climate projects.”

Another union leader, who has been organising inland and oceanic fishworkers across West Bengal, added: “The need of the hour is to support grassroots movements and collectives who are forging new paths for themselves to advocate for and amplify their demands for economic alternatives, sustainable management of resources, and decolonising authoritarian structures.”

When asked about sustaining life and livelihoods in Sundarbans, many members of the local Dalit and Adivasi communities have a constant fear of displacement. A “managed retreat” of the population has been floated for over a decade, but locals I spoke to were strongly against the idea.

One of the locals said: “We have been witnessing hardships since we were young, now our children are growing up. We still face the same fears, all the restrictions are for us, but the tourist departments, forest departments have to follow no rules.”

While discussing how to adapt to these changes, many locals echoed that fisherfolk and farmers should be involved in restorative actions planned for the region. They believe that until Indigenous and local knowledge of the region is taken into account, the efforts will fail.

Puja Mandal is a feminist social worker focusing on gender, labour, caste and migration. As associate senior manager of labour rights organisation SLD, her expertise lies in community organising, feminist action research and documentation. She works with various human rights based collectives in India.

This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence.

Source: Scroll
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