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NATURAL DISASTER AND COPING STRATEGIES IN THE

SUNDARBAN DELTA OF INDIA

by

Santadas Ghosh 1
Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan
West Bengal (India)

Background Paper for Conference on the " The Environments of the Poor”, 24-26 Nov 2010,
New Delhi

1
Associate Professor in Economics; e-mail <santadas_ghosh@yahoo.co.in>. This paper is partial
outcome of a research project with financial support from the South Asian Network for Development and
Environmental Economics (SANDEE)

1
SUMMARY
Sundarban Biosphere Reserve is part of the largest mangrove delta in the world spread across
India and Bangladesh, opening into the Bay of Bengal in its south. Besides the mangrove
Reserve Forest, the Indian side also includes 54 inhabited islands which are densely populated.
Settlements had come up on these nascent islands in more recent times, within last century.
The estimated population on such islands is around 1.5 million. These remote islanders are
predominantly agricultural, encircled by river embankments that protect their cultivable land from
the saline water in the delta. Due to their remoteness and lack of infrastructural development,
the livelihood choices are limited and are not similar to other people who are generally
categorized as ‘coastal’.

Due to historical reasons, the land distribution pattern on these islands are more equitable than
most of rural India. The region is characterized by rain fed agricultural with a single crop, carried
out mostly for self-consumption. Households augment their earning by engaging in a multiple
earning activities such as fishing, collection of prawn-seedlings from the river waters, and in
more recent times working as migrant labourer. The poverty scenario in the region is not acute.
Going by the monthly per-capita expenditure pattern, Sundarban households in general are not
worse off compared to their rural counterparts in mainland India.

In terms of the threat from sea level rise due to global climate change, it is recognized as one of
the most vulnerable parts in the world. But the immediate threat specifically comes from a
predicted increase in the frequency of cyclone formations in the Bay of Bengal. The effect of a
natural disaster has recently been demonstrated by cyclone Aila in May, 2009, which rendered
agriculture impossible over vast stretches of land for at least a full year due to salt deposits on
agricultural fields.

This study examined the spontaneous livelihood coping strategies of the households after the
disaster. The findings are based on a primary survey of 618 households that had been carried
out during March-June, 2010. The survey households constitute a random sample, stratified on
the basis of landholding, which are spread over 31 villages located in two administrative blocks.
The story that emerges from the survey estimates and descriptive data analysis indicates that
the two main livelihood coping strategies of the households affected by the disaster has been (i)
going out of working adults as migrant labourers and (ii) resorting to non-farm daily labour.

Literature suggests that under similar circumstances, where people reside near forests or such
open access natural resources, anthropogenic pressure on such resources often increased.
Poor agricultural people tend to fall back on natural resources like forests to compensate for
their lost livelihood. So, it could be envisaged that such disasters in Sundarban are potential
threats posed to the delicate mangrove ecosystem and the World Heritage Site due to the
presence of a large population in the fringe area. However data shows that in case of cyclone
Aila, the pressure on the forest and the river has actually gone down. This can partially be
attributed to a strict and exclusionist protection policy pursued by the Department of Forests as
well as awareness building programmes undertaken by government agencies and non-
governmental organizations. But a more convincing reason can also be traced to the fact that a
sizable chunk of the poor has went out as migrant labourers, who were otherwise
supplementing their agricultural income with fishing and forest collections.

2
Lastly, the experience of Aila can be telling for devising long term coping strategies for such
regions. Beyond the sudden disasters like cyclones, SLR scenarios predict an impending
doomsday for these islands between 50-100 years. Also there is a growing consensus for
preserving and possibly increasing the area under mangrove forests which is also a very
important tiger habitat. The ever increasing trend of out-migration, which also turned out to be
the poor’s most preferred coping strategy against livelihood loss, might be indicative that the
islands are no longer capable of sustaining the economic life of all their inhabitants.
In-situ protection of the islanders against such natural disasters involves huge costs for building
much bigger and stronger embankments all around them. Incidentally the same has been the
declared response from the government as a long term adaptation strategy. On the contrary,
many islanders are willing to move out to the mainland. It might be economically more rational
to explore the possibility of relocating parts of the population - phase by phase - in the mainland.
At least for the most remote and underdeveloped islands, field data is indicative that in-situ
protection can be significantly more costly than a well-designed relocation scheme which
foresee a complete relocation of the population from some islands in the long run.