Adaption is key

To understand the fate of the Sundarbans, which is often called the Desperate Delta, in a climate crisis-hit world, I called Ajanta Dey, joint secretary & programme director, Indian Foundation Nature Environment and Wildlife Society (NEWS), a Kolkata-based NGO that works extensively in the belt. I was lucky to catch her at the right time; Dey was about to leave the city for a four-day trip to a few remote islands to oversee NEWS projects.

“To survive the climate crisis, the Sundarbans and its people will have to learn adaptation techniques. That’s the only survival mantra,” said Dey. “I am often asked why so many people choose to stay put in these islands, braving the cyclones and the tides. They live because this is such a fertile land. You can just live off farming and throw the net into the sea for fresh catch of fish and crabs.”

Many experts feel the scale of impact of the climate crisis across the world is now so enormous that it will be beyond the “ability of climate finance to ameliorate, a as KS Ravi Kumar and Brinda Vishwanathan put it in their chapter in India in a warming World. And in any case, the prospects of large quantities of finance appear limited particularly for large, rapidly emerging economies such as India.

Therefore, as Dey rightly pointed out, the best available option that the Sundarbans and many other parts of the developing world may have is to mainstream climate crisis adaptation so that the economy and poorer sections of the population become resilient.

The increasing importance of adaptation strategies was also reiterated last week when the United Nations called on national governments to increase funds for climate adaptation. One of the four objectives of the Conference of Parties (COP26), which began in Glasgow on October 31, says that nations must work together to “protect and restore ecosystems and build defences, warning systems and resilient infrastructure and agriculture to avoid loss of homes, livelihoods and even lives”.

At COP26, on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also underlined the importance of adaptation, saying that the world’s response to the climate crisis must involve adaptation and not just mitigation. But unfortunately, he said, “Adaptation has not received the kind of importance in global climate debate that mitigation has.”

Permanent vulnerability

The Sundarbans’s vulnerability, experts suggest, is of a different dimension; it’s a permanent vulnerability; it’s a vulnerability linked to every tidal wave that touches the beautiful islands.

Therefore, its adaptation strategy should focus on nature-based solutions: No pesticide agriculture, integrated pest management and protecting the crucial mangroves. (Artificial fertilisers are responsible for the majority of nitrous oxide released into the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide has almost 300 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide and is responsible for about 6% of annual greenhouse gas emissions globally).

“In the Sundarbans, mangroves are that critical component from which everything evolves — fish, crabs, tiger, tourism, reptile, birds… they are also our best insurance against cyclones …. The mangroves ecosystem services are huge,” said Dey. Plus, they are huge carbon sinks. When Cyclone Aila hit the Sundarbans, islands that were lucky to have this bio-shield averted a full-scale disaster.

Restoring the bio-shield

In 2011, NEWS launched a project to restore mangrove forests. Over the next five years, the project planted more than 16 million mangroves to strengthen the existing man-made embankments that protect the communities’ homes and farmlands from flooding. When, in 2020, Cyclone Amphan, the most devastating tropical storm in the region since 1999, raged through the coasts, these mangroves forests stood like a wall to save embankments and communities.

One of the key aspects of the mangroves restoration project was the intensive participation of women. This was critical because they stayed at home and, therefore, could devote time to the project. Second, women are responsible for taking cattle to graze and could ensure that the animals didn’t destroy the saplings. But restoration of mangroves is not an easy task: Women walked through tidal mudflats to plant saplings and nurtured them till their roots were strong enough to withstand the hungry tides of the Sundarbans. But women proved to be up to the job.

Thanks to the restoration of 5,011 hectares of mangroves, fish, birds, shrimps, and other crustaceans came back, bringing additional economic and nutritional value to the communities.

Integration with livelihoods

But soon there was a realisation that restoration of the ecosystem was not enough; financial resilience of residents was also equally important to ensure that they keep guarding the forests.

In 2015, NEWS launched a programme integrating the conservation of the new mangrove plantations with sustainable agriculture, fishing and livestock. In 2018, it created the Badabon Harvest brand with a group of marginalised farmers to help them improve their revenues through livestock breeding, the commercialisation of organic products, improvement of agricultural practices and fish farming. Badabon means mangroves in Bengali.

“We wanted to connect the consumers with the producer, bypassing the middlemen. We also wanted to use Badabon as our brand name to inform the customers about the origin of the products, and the important role mangroves play in the lives of coastal citizens and how they help people to adapt to the climate challenges,” said Dey.

In a fortnight where climate will constitute the key debate globally, Sundarbans offers us an important insight. Parts of the world are already bearing the brunt of the climate crisis; adaptation is key for survival in the region; don’t aggravate the existing crisis, and, instead, use the natural ecosystems in place to make the region and its communities resilient; involve all segments, especially women, in these efforts; and integrate adaptation with livelihoods to make it sustainable. Those in Glasgow must think about this places such as Sunderbans as they craft a strategy to save the world.