সুন্দরবন-SUNDARBAN
Dire poverty is the norm in Sunderban
Last week, I visited the lush, mangrove islands of the Sunderban. I was stuck by the conversations with the local people, their state of struggle. I stayed on Bali Island, in a resort that was comfortable, simple, employed 32 of approximately 1400 villagers next door and shopped mainly from locally grown produce.
The report that owners have put in money for clinics and schools in the village makes it commendably inclusive. Still, in this UNESCO site, dire poverty is the norm.
Two nature guides from the village of Jamespur described meagre and seasonal earnings from tourism. Despite post-graduate degrees, the duo opted to live in the village, earning additional income by taking tuitions.
While tourism should be inclusive and constantly reduce its footprint, we must recognize that it can only produce limited livelihoods, and to a limited scale. Fragile ecologies like the Sunderban can only host seasonal tourism, with modest numbers.
Growth lies elsewhere. The entry fees of Rs 30 has to be raised substantially, and the additional funds invested in villages. Green jobs and crafts must be developed to generate livelihoods. Climate change adaptation is an urgent requirement. We need another imagination for the people of this fragile land.
Go Away, Styrofoam
Languidly floating away on a boat in the Sunderban, you will feel far away from your daily world, until a styrofoam thali or cup swims along. Although I didn’t see plastic bags, fluffy white syrofoam was a constant eyesore. It bobbed along the waters and caught my eye as white clumps on the marshy island. This plastic is not recyclable, and will disappear only when it is physically ingested by aquatic life. The dangers have been discussed in a brand new UN Report on marine plastic debris.
Last week, I visited the lush, mangrove islands of the Sunderban. I was stuck by the conversations with the local people, their state of struggle. I stayed on Bali Island, in a resort that was comfortable, simple, employed 32 of approximately 1400 villagers next door and shopped mainly from locally grown produce.
The report that owners have put in money for clinics and schools in the village makes it commendably inclusive. Still, in this UNESCO site, dire poverty is the norm.
Two nature guides from the village of Jamespur described meagre and seasonal earnings from tourism. Despite post-graduate degrees, the duo opted to live in the village, earning additional income by taking tuitions.
While tourism should be inclusive and constantly reduce its footprint, we must recognize that it can only produce limited livelihoods, and to a limited scale. Fragile ecologies like the Sunderban can only host seasonal tourism, with modest numbers.
Growth lies elsewhere. The entry fees of Rs 30 has to be raised substantially, and the additional funds invested in villages. Green jobs and crafts must be developed to generate livelihoods. Climate change adaptation is an urgent requirement. We need another imagination for the people of this fragile land.
Go Away, Styrofoam
Languidly floating away on a boat in the Sunderban, you will feel far away from your daily world, until a styrofoam thali or cup swims along. Although I didn’t see plastic bags, fluffy white syrofoam was a constant eyesore. It bobbed along the waters and caught my eye as white clumps on the marshy island. This plastic is not recyclable, and will disappear only when it is physically ingested by aquatic life. The dangers have been discussed in a brand new UN Report on marine plastic debris.
Millions at risk from rapid sea rise in swampy Sundarban.
The tiny hut sculpted out of mud at the edge of the sea is barely large enough for Bokul Mondol and his family to lie down. The water has taken everything else from them, and one day it almost certainly will take this, too.
Saltwater long ago engulfed the 5 acres where Mondol once grew rice and tended fish ponds, as his ancestors had on Bali Island for some 200 years. His thatch-covered hut, built on public land, is the fifth he has had to build in the last five years as the sea creeps in.
"Every year we have to move a little further inland," he said.
Seas are rising more than twice as fast as the global average here in the Sundarbans, a low-lying delta region of about 200 islands in the Bay of Bengal where some 13 million impoverished Indians and Bangladeshis live. Tens of thousands like Mondol have already been left homeless, and scientists predict much of the Sundarbans could be underwater in 15 to 25 years.