MOUSHUNI ISLAND, India—Sheikh Alauddin, like
hundreds of other residents living on West Bengal’s Moushuni
island, has never heard the term "global warming". But he is
living with its consequences.
"At night we just pray to God, and hope the
sea does not drown us," the 60-year-old told Reuters in
Poilagheri village on the sparsely-populated island, part of the
Sunderbans national park and the world’s largest mangrove
forest.
When the tide comes in, sea water laps at the
top of a mud embankment that towers 6 metres (20 feet) above
Alauddin’s adjacent house and is all that keeps it from being
washed away.
After a 10-year study in and around the Bay
of Bengal, oceanographers say the sea is rising at 3.14
millimetres a year in the Sunderbans against a global average of
2 mm, threatening low-lying areas of India and Bangladesh.
"At least 15 islands have been affected but
erosion is widespread in other islands as well," said Sugato
Hazra, an oceanographer at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, the
capital of West Bengal.
A United Nations climate panel, which grouped
2,500 scientists from 130 countries, concluded last month that
human activity was causing global warming and predicted more
droughts, heatwaves and rising seas.
But for the Sunderbans, made up of hundreds
of islands and criss-crossed by narrow water channels and home
to many of India’s dwindling tiger population, the threat is
more immediate.
"The crops have failed due to scanty rainfall
but where do we go?" says Alauddin as his family of twelve
stares at their parched farmland.
A combination of drought and then heavy
rainfall this year and increasing soil salinity have made it
impossible to grow enough food to survive on traditional
agriculture alone.
"We now depend on fishing in the high seas
and sometimes even eat leaves from different plants to survive,"
a frail-looking Jameel Mullick said.
At least 4 million people live in the islands
spread across 9,630 sq. km (3,700 sq. miles) of mangrove swamps.
For centuries, the mangroves fed on both
saline and fresh water — tides brought sea water upstream and
mixed it with water from the Ganga and Brahmaputra rivers. But
now rising sea levels are pushing salt water inland.
Sixty year old Ayesha Khatoon stood on top of
a mud embankment in Moushuni that has been breached at least
seven times in the past 10 years.
"There was a lovely mud road surrounded by
trees beyond this embankment and we had 3 acres (1.2 hectares)
of farmland which the sea swallowed in the last few years,"
recalled Ayesha.
"No one visits us now and they have left us
all to die," she said, tears welling in her eyes as she hugs her
young grandson.
Rapid felling of trees on the islands — in part to fuel two
small power plants — is adding to erosion woes. —Reuters
