Can we save the Sundarbans for our children?

By Krishnendu Mukherjee
24 Feb 2010
The international community will have to take effective measures to protect the Sundarbans, the World’s largest mangrove forest and South Asia's largest carbon-sink, from the rising seas.
Rising sea levels have destroyed livelihoods and forced people to migrate

Sheikh Motaleb's family were financially well-off when they lived on Lohachara Island in India's Sundarbans' archipelago in the Bay of Bengal. The sixty bighas (twenty acres) of fertile land they owned provided the family with an above-average income. In 1983, when their land was completely eroded by the sea, they relocated to Gangasagar Island, the largest island in the Indian Sundarbans. The two bighas of land provided by the local village council in the "colony" for displaced people, now provides a meagre income, which Sheikh Motaleb supplements with his job as an administrator at the local youth hostel which earns him Rs 2500. As a consequence, the family have slipped to the bottom of the social ladder.

Bad karma? Possibly. But what makes Sheikh Motaleb's story stand out from so many in the sub-continent is that his family may be some of the first environmental refugees from the effects of climate change. According to a 2002 study done by Jadavpur University Kolkata, an increase in surface-air temperature in the area has lead to sea-level rise and coastal erosion. The Report's findings indicate that whilst coastal erosion is a phenomenon that has been happening in the Sundarbans for centuries, it is being aggravated through human-induced climate change. Sheikh Motableb's case is however, the tip of the proverbial melting iceberg. The Jadavpur study estimates that over one lakh people could be rendered homeless by land loss predominantly caused by sea-level rise in the entire Sundarbans by the year 2020. The majority of those environmental refugees will be forced into India's already burgeoning cities to find work and shelter.

India has no proper system to deal with unnatural disaster on this scale. The Sundarbans' refugees have so far been provided the land under the land reform laws brought in by West Bengal's Communist-led government. A search of India's Natural Disaster Management Authority provided no reference of any adaptation programmes for climate change, nor has India's National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) published in June 2008, provide any real initiatives on how adaptation to climate change is to be achieved. According to India's Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, speaking at the G8 summit in July 2009, the country already spends 2-2.5% of its GDP on meeting the consequences of climatic conditions. Even the limit of a two-degree centigrade rise in average global temperature, agreed by the G8, would require a significant increase in public spending to meet its predicted environmental consequences.


All this leaves a large hole of uncompensated costs for developing countries, who under the international acknowledgement of "common but differentiated responsibility" in the Convention on Climate Change, have contributed least to the climate change problem. 2020 is also the year by which, under Gordon Brown's ambitious plan, $100 billion dollars a year would be transferred to developing countries to cope with climate change damage. The money would be raised through both private and public sources, and would be far less than the 1% of the GDP of the developed countries, proposed by the G77 group of developing nations. Further, it is questionable whether developed countries would be willing and able to contribute even this amount long-term, given the costs of the global recession and their own costs of adapting to the effects of climate change. The inequalities in both the resources and ability to prevent damage from the effects of climate change are writ large.

Whatever funds are finally forthcoming, the international community has to ensure that they are used properly and effectively for adaptation purposes. One such suggestion is that developing countries in particular, should pass a Climate Change Security Act. The act should mandate all relevant ministries to have nodal officials who are concerned with looking at climate change needs from the perspective of their ministry and be involved with planning and creating policies and action plans. There should be a full study of a country's vulnerabilities and adaptation needs which include analysing impacts on water resources, agriculture, biodiversity, ecosystems and human health. Anticipatory actions should be contemplated in all development programmes and the act should ensure that the legal measures for both reactive and anticipatory adaptation needs are integrated into all relevant laws.

The Sundarbans, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is globally recognised as an area of almost unique ecological and conservation importance, as the World's largest mangrove forest and South Asia's largest carbon-sink. It has been shortlisted as one of the New Seven Wonders of Nature, a competition to rank the world's natural marvels, under the slogan; "If we want to save anything, we first need to truly appreciate it", the results will be announced in 2011.

For the world to save the Sundarbans for our children, requires an appreciation of the fact that climate change is already disproportionately affecting large parts of the developing world, and that not only money and technology, but systems are also needed. Developing countries have a crucial role in identifying adaptation needs at an early stage, and preparing the necessary scientific, administrative and legal infrastructures for the implementation of adaptation plans. Developed countries need to shoulder their financial responsibility of preventing and compensating for climate change damage, but require proven evidence that a country has taken their responsibility of providing the necessary steps to ensure that the money and technology is used for its intended purpose. The countries in the world need to recognise that we are saving the Sundarbans not only for Sheikh Motalebs' children but for all our children.