31-year-old Aparna Dhara lives in Lakshmipur village of Kakdwip Block in Indian Sundarbans with her husband, two sons (16 and 12-year-old), and in-laws. Aparna and her husband are primarily paddy farmers, who also grow some vegetables and own a small shop to sell poultry products. Since Cyclone Amphan in May 2020, Aparna’s house has been destroyed twice. She says, “Earlier there were no trees around our house or on the banks. As a result, high tides would break the banks resulting in water entering our houses and leading to huge devastation.”
But, today, Aparna along with other local women has planted trees and grown a little forest that now protects river embankments. Since the salinity in their area is high, women have planted mangroves like Avicennia (grey mangrove or white mangrove) that can tolerate saline water.
Many like Aparna have created nurseries and planted hundreds of mangroves in and around their area across Sundarbans. And today, they are reaping the benefits of mangroves in the form of a natural bio-shield, strengthened embankments, and forest products. Mangrove afforestation driven by local women has been possible due to the efforts of NGO Nature Environment and Wildlife Society (NEWS) that made these women green warriors.
Until 2009, in Sundarbans, NGO NEWS was engaged in various activities like tiger straying and generating livelihood activities. Recalling their work, Ajanta Dey, Joint Secretary and Programme Director at Nature Environment and Wildlife Society said,
Forest agencies and other private organisations were always planting mangroves. They would plant in July and by the year end, in December, nothing would remain because they were practising monoculture, that is, planting only one type of species. Also, there was no monitoring of the plantation; it was taken up as a one-time job.
To switch from plantation, a one-time job to afforestation for creating a forest and restoring mangroves, from 2007-2009, NGO NEWS tried a community-led plantation model with local women in three villages. Explaining their work, Ms Dey said,
We selected two patches of land – 100 hectares and 70 hectares. While we created awareness about the importance of mangroves, both plantation and monitoring were done by women. We did the risk mapping to know why mangroves planted by forests or other agencies were dying. There were multiple reasons like grazing, fishing – net dragging would uproot the mangroves and soil erosion – in some places chunks of soil were eroding. We mitigated the risks by involving the community; we asked villagers to not let their goats loose for grazing. We saw that in two to three years, the yield was good.
On May 25, 2009, cyclonic storm Aila struck eastern India and southern Bangladesh. Only a tail of Aila touched Sundarbans and part of Kolkata and moved to Bangladesh but it caused heavy damage in the area. In the words of Ms Dey, crocodiles were inside the villages, Aila washed away fishes, and houses were destroyed like someone pressed them with a thumb.
We noticed that wherever we had planted mangroves, those embankments were absolutely okay. It came as a lesson on the importance of mangrove plantations. Personally, the devastation was an eye-opener for me too. We as an organisation started wondering what we are doing here. Unless we are able to make islands resilient whatever livelihood activities we do or houses we build, they will be destroyed if mangroves are not there, said Ms Dey.
It’s after Cyclone Aila, the focus of NGO NEWS shifted to mangrove afforestation and community-led mangrove plantation with the message, If you need to live here, you have to protect the mangroves.
Soon after the NGO mobilised funds, did risk mapping and from July 2010 to 2015, they did mangrove plantation across 183 sites in Sundarbans, covering 4,586 hectares of land. Over the years, 22 more sites have been added, covering an additional 180 hectares of land.
When we mitigated the risk, we worked with the fishermen and told them to not park their boats all over the embankments because that restricts the growth of mangroves. We asked them to select one area so that we don’t plant there, said Ms Dey.
Nurseries were created at each site so that women involved in plantations are attached to the tree from the start. Currently, only 8-10 nurseries exist at other sites, the plantation is completed and now trees are growing into the forest. NDTV-Dettol Banega Swasth India team visited a central nursery at Manmathanagar where 54 local women are growing different kinds of mangrove saplings. Women like Tumpa Jana believe it’s their responsibility as the inhabitants of Sundarbans to preserve and protect the delta for future generations. She said,
We plant mangrove saplings by the riverside to keep the area around our houses safe. First, we prepare the saplings and then plant them in a row along the river to keep the embankment and our houses protected.