Kolkata, July 15 (Inditop.com) The government should formulate a synchronised disaster management policy to save the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove swamp, from the growing impact of climate change, environmentalists said here Wednesday.
“There’s no ‘mission statement’ mentioned in the National Action Plan for Climate Change for saving the bio-diversity of Sundarbans,” Sugata Hazra of Jadavpur University’s Department of Oceanographic Studies told reporters on the sidelines of an interactive session organised by Greenpeace.
“There’s hardly any food or cyclone shelter in place, nor are there raised tanks and drinking water facilities, or health and relief centres at the village or block level, or strategies to improve food security even after the promulgation of the Disaster Management Act,” he maintained.
“No effective integrated costal management plan has been prepared so far to conserve this vulnerable deltaic region. We cannot stop the rise of the sea level but what we can do is improve our preparedness,” Hazra said, adding: “We must accept first that the climate is changing, and changing faster than anticipated.”
Talking about the rise of the sea level and the loss of human habitat in the Sundarbans estuarine belt, Hazra said in the past two years alone, there had been four cyclones – Sidr, Nargis, Bijli and Aila – which caused major land erosion on both the Indian and Bangladesh sides of the Sundarbans.
“There has also been a perceptible change, almost 26 percent over past 120 years, in the frequency of these cyclonic storms in this part of the Bay of Bengal. This may increase further with the intensifying of El Nino in the coming years,” he added.
The Sundarbans is a vast area covering 4,262 sq km, with mangrove cover of 2,125 sq km in India and a larger portion in Bangladesh. The alluvial archipelago, a Unesco World Heritage site, is part of the world’s largest delta formed by the rivers Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna.
“The crisis that climate change can bring to the Sundarbans region is immense and the government needs to address adaptation plans. We also must ensure that global warming does not cross the two degree tipping point,” said Sudhir Chella Rajan of the Department of Humanities and Social Science at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai.
He said India should seek policy options that are proactive in terms of developing international strategies to reduce the risk of destructive climate change.
The Sundarbans delta has forest tracts that reach 130 km inland from the coastline. It forms the most effective barrier against tidal surges and tsunami waves known on earth. The flip side is that the area itself is on the frontline of natural disasters.
Experts say the huge displacement caused by the cyclone Aila that hit parts of Sundarbans May 25 this year may also force many of the estimated 400,000 people who live among the mangrove forests, the narrow creeks and the wide rivers to enter protected forests in search of livelihood, thereby seriously threatening one of the richest but most fragile ecosystems on earth.
A voluntary organisation, Sundarbanbasir Sathe (With the people of Sundarbans), is also working for preparing a detailed map of all affected blocks of Sundarbans, based on the impact of Aila.
“We are likely to finish the entire work by next one week. We will hand over this map to the government requesting them to prepare a blueprint for the coordinated relief in the distribution network in the cyclone-ravaged Sundarbans,” a Sundarbanbasir Sathe representative said.
