On May 20, 2020, vast swathes of West Bengal, Bangladesh and the coastal Odisha were devastated by the super cyclone Amphan, the strongest to have developed on the Bay of Bengal in nearly 20 years. More than a hundred lives were lost and property worth crores of rupees was damaged.
Naturally, over the last few days, there have been multiple relief drives across Bengal to help with post-Amphan rebuilding, a fair bit of which, we can assume, will reach the Sundarbans.
Among the things that the late environmentalist Dr Asish K. Ghosh taught us, his students, about the Sunderbans, the most important lessons is that relief drives, well-meaning as they may be, are often unhelpful when done without a knowledge of this starkly different ecosystem.
The Sundarbans as an area is very different bio-geographically and in extension, socio-economically from the rest of the subcontinent. It is a mangrove forest located on the delta formed by the confluence of the rivers Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna. It has its own unique flora and fauna, and through generations, the people inhabiting these islands have lived symbiotically with nature.
We have all learnt these in our geography classes, but why is it relevant now? The thing is, whenever cyclones hit this delta, the strong winds break embankments and inundate the islands in salt water, salinating agricultural fields and waterbodies. For a primarily agricultural community, this means no cultivable land, lack of food security and then mass displacement.
Also read: Rattled and Shook: Cyclone Amphan Put Death Two Feet Away From Us
How can relief-packages solve that? For example, a general relief package, sent anywhere after a natural disaster, consists of baby food, rice grains, etc. However, what was seen post Aila (another cyclone that hit the area in 2009) in Sunderbans was that despite receiving these packages, people there were still starving for weeks because there was no water to drink or to prepare the formula milk or rice with.
The salinisation of all waterbodies cuts off access to any drinking water. Dr Ghosh’s method of dealing with this was instructing his students to bring a few bottles each of filtered water from their homes. This is what I am urging relief workers to do – please request your donors and sponsors to also donate a few bottles of filtered water. It doesn’t cost money, but helps solve an essential need.
Similarly, the rice fields, even after the water retreats, remain salinised; so there is a need to reintroduce salt-resistant varieties of paddy. This variety of paddy was originally cultivated in Sundarbans, but over time people shifted to regular rice cultivation. The difficult task of reintroducing these varieties of paddy that can grow in brackish water and convincing farmers to use these seeds instead has already been done by Dr Ghosh. All we need to do now is help the farmers procure these salt resistant varieties of rice seeds since all reserves of seeds for the next planting season has been lost. That will be possible if agricultural research institutes collaborate with relief workers.
Cyclone Amphan-affected areas in South 24 Parganas. Photo: PTI
Relief packages to these deltaic islands must contain mosquito repellent coils and match sticks to help deal with the malaria outbreak that follows almost every episode of cyclonic storms. They should also include water purifiers like chlorine tablets and zioline with proper instructions on how to use them. People have died before after directly ingesting chlorine tablets, because they did not know better.
Visiting doctors and medical camps should be equipped with enough antivenin serum injections to deal with the increased number of victims of snake bites. The natural disasters affect both human and non-human alike. Sunderbans have a significant wild animal population that gets as traumatised by natural disasters as their human neighbours, and this negatively impacts human-animal relationship.
Most importantly, relief workers should be equipped to travel beyond Gosaba block to remote and distant islands. There is a tendency to concentrate relief only in Gosaba, which is the easiest in terms of accessibilty. The relief workers have to at least try to reach the areas of Bali, Satjelia, Dayapur, Patharpratima, G-plot and Rangbelia, which are always left out. They should be equipped to travel by boat to these areas, and therefore the relief materials need to be packed in a way that is compact and convenient to transport. To be able to do this, non-government organisations and independent aid workers must coordinate and form a network of communication and support. Otherwise there is often an overlap of relief materials, leaving a lot of people deprived while also not making optimal use of the materials.
Ultimately, Sunderban is ecologically fragile and extremely vulnerable to climate change. Climate change enables natural disasters to devastate more. Dr Ghosh once worked with the people of the delta, training them to deal with climate change. He also worked with the government, holding them accountable, pushing them to build sustainable infrastructure in this area.
With him gone, our work is to continue to hold our government accountable and push them to develop a plan to manage the large population of Sunderbans that will sooner or later be displaced due to climate change. We should be prepared for such an eventuality.
Several islands, like Lohachara and Suparibhanga in the Sundarbans have already been reclaimed by the sea; while more than half of the Ghoramara island has been submerged. Over a hundred islands face the same risk due to rising sea levels. Both the National Action Plan on Climate Change and the West Bengal Climate Change Action Plan must address the issue of migration and thereafter formulate plans to resettle and rehabilitate the displaced people in a humane, organised and sustainable manner.
The idea of relief is not to make the people dependent on external aid after a natural disaster but rather to give them the assistance they need to rebuild sustainable structures. And finally, we should remember to help Sunderbans all year round and not just in the aftermath of natural disasters.
Sreyasi is an alumna of TISS Guwahati and an independent researcher.
Featured image credit: Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters