The Sunderbans, India
As global warming melts the world’s ice, and heats the oceans, sea level is rising. It could go up 3 feet by the end of the century. Some coastal areas, such as the low-lying coastline off the Bay of Bengal, where the Ganges, Meghna and Brahmaputra Rivers meet the Indian Ocean, is already threatened.
Just south of Calcutta, India, the Royal Bengal Tiger prowls the Sunderbans Islands, which contain the world’s largest unbroken mangrove forest. Some researchers say the rising sea level is making the brackish waters around the southernmost islands too salty, destroying the tigers’ habitat, and pushing the animals into nearby villages. There, the number of conflicts with tigers is increasing, risking human life and threatening the future of this rare and majestic animal.
The rising water is also a direct menace to the people of the Sunderbans, many of whom live and work below sea level. Before the Sunderbans were cleared for farming, the tides washed them every day. Then dwellers erected thousands of miles of mud dikes, encircling each island in a protective hug. These earthen embankments require constant vigilance and frequent maintenance, and even the best dikes break up in storms. Tushar Kanjilal, secretary of the Tagore Society for Rural Development, says when they breach, “all the crops are damaged, all the mud houses collapse, all the waters in the ponds, creeks, canals, become saline.”
Advancing seas make storm damage more likely and cause land to crumble into the sea. Oceanographer Sugata Hazra, of Jadavapur University, predicts India’s Sunderbans islands will lose 15% of their area by 2020, displacing up to 100,000 people, who will become “a kind of environmental migrant.” He says such climate change refugees will increasingly strain social services and swell India’s slums.
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PHOTO GALLERY OF THE SUNDERBANS, INDIA
- View Dan's Photographs of The Sunderbans, India
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The Sunderbans Islands were contiguous mangrove forest before they were settled, and were washed daily by tides. Now thousands of miles of embankments completely surround most of the 54 inhabited islands, keeping nearly 5 million residents safe. -
There is almost no industry in the Sunderbans. Most inhabitants make their living by farming and fishing. Here a woman and her daughter fish for seed shrimp, which they sell to shrimp farms. -
Transportation in the Sunderbans is by boat between islands and by foot and bicycle on land. -
About half of the islands are undeveloped, contained in a park that is part of the world’s largest unbroken mangrove forest. The park is home to many rare and unusual plants and animals such as the barking deer, estuarine crocodile and the Sundari tree, after which the region is thought to be named. -
Hundreds of bird species live in or visit the Sunderbans. -
The Bengal tiger is very secretive and hard to photograph. This specimen was located at the Sunderbans Park headquarters. -
Pranabes Sanyal, the former director of the Sunderbans Park, says the Bengal Tiger is a sensitive barometer of changes in these coastal forests. He says rising sea level is making the brackish waters around the southernmost islands too salty, destroying the tigers’ habitat, and pushing the animals into nearby villages. “The percentage of man-eating has increased in recent years,” he says, referring to the tiger’s famous ability and willingness to attack humans. -
People who live in the developed parts of the Sunderbans are prohibited from hunting, fishing and collecting forest products, like honey, in the highly protected “core area,” of the park. However, people can go into undeveloped “buffer zones” between inhabited areas and the core area. Before they enter tiger territory, many natives pause to worship and seek protection from tigers at shrines to Bonbibi, a forest goddess, shown here. -
Anup Mallick is recuperating at PG Hospital in Calcutta, after being attacked by a tiger while harvesting crabs in the Sunderbans. “The tiger came and jumped on me,” he says. “My friends had clubs in their hands, so the tiger took me ten or fifteen feet away from them, and left me. Then it ran away.” His companions found Mallick missing part of his left ear and with deep wounds on his neck. -
As Tushar Kanjilal, secretary of the Tagore Society for Rural Development, says, “every day the people living in Sunderbans islands, they go to sleep under water,” referring to the fact that most of the land there is below sea level during high tide. If the embankment protecting an island fails in a storm, Kanjilal says, “you will become a beggar within one hour." -
One of the largest and most important pilgrimage destinations of Hinduism is Sagar Island, at the mouth of the Ganges River. The beach, where visitors bathe and collect bottles of holy water, has a colorful collection of refreshment stands, holy men in robes and portable shrines, like these. -
Mohammed Sheikh Gafur serves visitors sweet tea in tiny cups at teahouse on Sagar Island. Gafur once farmed twenty-five or thirty acres of land. Then the thin dike protecting his land breached in a cyclone, destroying everything he owned. Now he and his wife live and serve customers in this hut made of plastic tarps hung from a frame of bamboo poles. -
Ghoramara Island has lost about half its land in recent years. This native of the island and her family have moved three times as their land has crumbled into the sea. Now they live just inside a new embankment, on the right side of the picture, so their house will be the first house to suffer in the next flood. -
Sugata Hazra, an oceanographer at Calcutta’s Jadavapur University, predicts India’s Sunderbans islands will lose 15% of their area by 2020 – about 40 square kilometers – displacing up to 100,000 people.
