Gangadhar Bor’s life has been planned around the rising tide for more than a year. He moves every full moon from his one-room brick, tin-roofed home to a tarpaulin-covered, bamboo-roofed hut a few meters above ground.
The Muri Ganga River surges into the embankments, which are supposed to protect Bor’s village of Bankimnagar off the coast on Sagar Island. The water surges at a hundred meters and villager must wait for it subside before they can return to their homes.
Bor says, “It is now a normal way of living.”
Sagar Island is located at the western end the Sundarbans. It is where the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers meet and smaller tributaries form the largest mangrove forest in the world. The delta covers a total of 40,000 km (15,444 miles) and runs from Bangladesh in the east to West Bengal in India in the west.
Sagar, the largest of the Indian islands in the delta, has a population of over 200,000 and is growing. Rising tides and many storms have rendered smaller islands almost uninhabitable. This has made it home to many climate refugees like Bor, a 65-year-old.
Bor, 65 years old, must move every full moon from his house to a temporary hut on stilts while his home is flooded by water.
However, Sagar Island itself is now in danger. The average sea level rise in the delta over the last 20 years has been 3 centimeters (1.25 inches) per year. This is much faster that anywhere else in the globe. Sagar has already lost about 50 km2 of land. This is a sixth of the area that was previously affected by coastal erosion.
A haven that is no longer safe
Bor fled Lohachara Island to Sagar in the late 1980s when the delta waters threatened his home. It was a difficult decision.
He recalls that he wanted to stay back because he had a steady income catching fish. “But every year, we had to move in and build a new home as the island shrank a little bit. After many floods and storms, we finally gave up.
Lohachara had been completely submerged by 1996.
He and others from his community, who live on the southern tip of the island, now face the same problem that drove them to leave their home.
Bor said that the river would occasionally breach its embankment when he first arrived in Sagar. But monthly floods at high tide are a different experience.
While it is possible to clean out homes each month, it is difficult to restore the farmland that the community relies upon.
Bor’s land now is permanently inundated with river’s salinity water. He was still cultivating betel, a stimulant that is popular in south Asia, two years ago on a plot of land two acres behind his brick home.
Two major cyclones pushed the Sundarbans further into crisis over that period.
Protecting fragile coastlines
About 25% of the delta’s Indian Mangrove Forest was destroyed by Cyclone Amphan in 2020. Mangroves provide a natural barrier against coastal erosion and rough water.
Amphan and Cyclon Yaas also damaged the brick- and earth embankments which had protected many parts the island for over thirty years.
Sundarbans is the largest mangrove rainforest in the world. It is home to unique wildlife including tigers. Mangroves act as a buffer from storms
Sunil Jana is a member the panchayat, which is an elected village governance body. He says that repairs have started on 200m of Bankimnagar’s embankment. But repairs are slow.
Jana says, “Saline water must be stopped first if we want to improve our situation,”
The immediate repairs were completed by the West Bengal state government. A comprehensive plan was approved by the West Bengal state government for a new “circuit”, an embankment that consists of two layers of mangroves and dikes. This will be used to protect the most vulnerable parts of the islands.
The project’s timeframe is not yet known, but the plan estimates that it could be completed in 10 years.
Those who live on the water’s edge are not able to have that much time. Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University, Kolkata’s School of Oceanographic Studies, said that a second cyclone could strike before the circuit embankment has been completed. This could lead to around a thousand people losing their homes.
Sunil Jana, a village council member, says that more needs to be done in order to repair the embankments that protect the village from flooding.
Climate refugees are moving on
The Indian Sundarbans are a harsh place to live in, with 43% of the population living below the poverty line. Many survive on subsistence agriculture, fishing, and honey collection.
Young men and women had to leave Sagar for Kolkata, the nearest city or for states like Kerala or Andhra Pradesh which are over 1,000 kilometers away. They live in poverty as contract workers and daily wage laborers at factories and construction sites.
Many of those who are still here want to go, but unlike the relocation programs which brought them to Sagar in 1980s and 1990s they don’t have any government assistance.
Mohan Kumar Bera is a social scientist at Birla Institute of Technology & Science. He believes the Indian government should come up with a coordinated plan that will help people whose homes have been left behind to move. This should be combined with training and means for alternative employment in order to adapt to life as an islander where traditional agricultural livelihoods are becoming increasingly difficult.
He says that unaided migration in crisis situations leaves people much more vulnerable than when they move together in a group with some social support. We need to think about cluster resettlement and training for alternative employment options so that people are less dependent on the land.
Yaas Bishnupada Bodhunia points to an embankment in his 70s. He says that the water has come closer to him over the course of his lifetime.
Bor said he would move back if he could. He isn’t optimistic about receiving the support he needs to start a new life.
“I don’t see any help coming,” he says. He laments that we are “forgotten people”.
Life in limbo
Others are afraid of being forced to flee again. Uttam, 55, arrived in Sagar from Ghoramara, a devastated island, 20 years ago.
Dolui says that when he moved to the country, they had no food and no work, as people were suspicious of refugees.
He says, “They wouldn’t even allow us to go into their homes.” “Things have changed now. But that’s not something I want to do again.”
Those displaced from other parts the delta continue to arrive in Sagar. The government temporarily evacuated about 2,000 people from neighboring islands before Cyclon Yaas.
Many have returned to the comfort of their homes while others have moved on to larger cities in search for work. Others are still in Sagar, uncertain about the future.
Edited By: Ruby Russell
