“I still remember the fateful day, when I lost everything… waves just washed away my hut and other homes around here too. Then slowly the entire island got submerged.” Jyotsna Giri, 55, has been directly affected by climate change. She used to live on Sagar Island in the Southern Sunderbans, in the Ganges delta.

Moushumi Basu/WAVE

“We had our own house at Lohachara Island about 35 or 40 years ago. There were two other adjoining islands: Suparibhanga and Ghoramara. But now Suparibhanga island has completely gone and Ghoramara is on the verge of disappearing,” she says. The islands of the Sunderbans are disappearing under rising sea levels.

“I had to build and re-build my home three times since 1975. The tides kept washing away everything we had, including our paddy fields,” says Jalaluddin Saha, 60, from Moushuni Island in the Southern Sunderbans. He’s seen how high waves simply breach any embankments villagers try to build. “Either our island is sinking or the sea is rising.”

Losing land and livelihood

Saha says that he once owned more than two hectares of land and enough livestock for his family to live comfortably, but today he has less than a hectare of useable land and only one cow.  

Panchanan Gayen is a 45-year-old farmer who’s lived here all his life and he’s noticing a new climate pattern. “Most of the rains are not during the monsoons, but after the monsoon period. Rains do not come when seeds are sown. It comes when the harvest is to be reaped and the biggest problem for us now is that we do not know what to grow, when anymore.”

Local fishermen are also suffering. “There was a time when we could catch more than 50 different kinds of fish,” recalls Srikrishna Bhuina, a 40-year-old fisherman from Kakdwip islands. “But now the rivers are becoming more salty and there are less fish in them.” 

Climate change as culprit?

Dr. Sugata Hazra, Director of the School of Oceanographic Studies at Kolkata University is studying the impact of climate change in the Sunderbans with the World Wildlife Fund. “The need of the hour is to accept these harsh realities and come out with rehabilitation packages and adaptation strategies, to compensate their displacement due to loss of land and livelihood.” 

But Pradeep Vyas, who directs the state government’s Sunderban Biosphere Reserve is skeptical: “The impact of climate change is being exaggerated by the experts. The average tidal amplitude between 3.5 to five metres is a regular phenomenon, which the villagers battle regularly. So how does a nominal increase of sea level make much of an impact in their lives?” According to him, erosion is a common feature of any coastal landscape and the Sunderbans is no different. 

Though the people of the Sunderbans always lived a half-amphibious life, adapting to the tides, they are sure that things have changed in recent years. These days, the sea is not a benevolent friend who comes and then goes. These days, it claims their homes and livelihoods and doesn’t show any signs of leaving.