Perceptions Amidst Conflict

People and Voices from the Sundarbans

- Ms Debopriya Mondal

Sundarbans is a complex cluster of low-lying islands stretching along the coastline of India and Bangladesh. Distinguished by the unique mangrove forests, the Sundarbans landscape is a microcosm for examining the dilemmas of development, ecology, and competing values. According to a report, 1 ‘Sundarbans: Future Imperfect Climate Adaptation’, the western part of this landscape struggles with the gradual climatic changes, making the region vulnerable to floods, cyclones, sea-level rise, and coastline erosion, while the eastern part, due to its proximity to the mangrove forests which harbours tigers, is vulnerable to human–wildlife conflict. Open access resource extraction, except in Protected Areas, supports livelihoods of the human population with an average density of 1,080 persons per sq. km (as per the 2011 Census data) on the Indian side. The socio-economic structure is not distributed evenly across the landscape due to the varied geographical attributes, available resource base and the population constitution. While over half of the local population are landless, they are almost entirely dependent on rain-fed agriculture. Subsistence to commercial exploitation of biodiversity resources augments income, 2 though fraught with high risks of human–wildlife conflict and tropical storms. These ecosystem resources include the non-timber forest produce, such as honey collection, fishing, and crab collection.

Receding strength of the mangroves, tidal water overflow, increased salinity of the surface water, and coastal erosion are progressively leading to adaptive responses, such as moving to a different village, seasonal migration to other states, shifting from agriculture and resorting to trades such as fishing in the estuaries and honey collection and subsequently being susceptible to conflict.