Sundarbans Villages To Get Shield Against Climate Change

News Post India 12 Feb 08;

The British government has launched a $60,000 climate change initiative to tackle the effect of global warming in some of the most vulnerable areas of the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest.

The project has been undertaken in association with Kolkata based Nature, Environment and Wildlife Society (NEWS), which is raising awareness about the threat of climate change in the Sunderbans and in doing so are trying to adapt to its effects by planting mangroves along a 6-km stretch of riverbank covering a area of half a square kilometre.

The villages to be covered under the initiative are Mathurakhand and Amlamethi that face extreme threat from the rising sea.

The Sunderbans, a delta spread over 9,630 sq km is sinking 2.5 mm on an average every year due to erosion, deforestation and destruction of the mangrove forest.

The efforts undertaken by NEWS received a huge boost when the British High Commissioner's office decided to join the project not only to see the first planned action being taken to save the mangrove delta, but also record the project in a documentary as an example for future efforts.

Talking about the project, British High Commissioner Sir Richard Stagg said Sunday: 'I was shocked to learn that of the 3,500 km of shoreline in the Sunderbans, more than 2,000 km are today without the necessary mangrove cover. It is essential that an ecosystem like the Sunderbans has a defence system in place.'

Mangroves are also very effective against cyclones. Two Orissa districts with mangroves were affected very little by the super cyclone in 1999. Last year, the Sundarbans significantly softened the impact of Cyclone Sidr on Bangladesh.

Had the cyclone hit the Indian Sunderbans instead, the impact would have been devastating because mangroves have been denuded at many places. The British funded project aims to restore greenery to prevent a disaster.

Abhijit Mitra, a professor at the Marine Science Department of Calcutta University, said: 'Apart from building awareness about the project, the money will help us initiate a three-pronged strategy to study and mitigate the problem of mangrove erosion and growing salinity in the water of Sunderbans that is also leading to erosion.'

The project funding includes scientific studies to assess climate change impact on marine life. With salinity shooting up, the population of the main mangrove plant Sundari has dwindled, leading to the loss of several fish species.

'We will also do a study on the sequestering rate of carbon dioxide in certain mangroves or rate at which these plants absorb carbon dioxide,' Mitra said.

NEWS has also adopted three villages here - Satyanaranpur, Amlamethi and Mathurakhand - where 14 women are working on a mangrove-harvesting project.

A NEWS spokesperson said: 'We have procured 80,000 seeds and are preparing a nursery of 50,000 saplings which would be planted along the embankment of the villages.'