The
fisherman
‘As
the tiger jumped, he caught hold of my head and pulled me backwards.
The whole world became dark. I could no longer see anything as my
head was inside the tiger’s mouth.’
When
he was seized by a tiger, Rabi Majumdar tried to re-enact an old folk tale
his father had told him, about a woman who poked a crocodile in the eye.
By jabbing his fingers into the palate of the tiger’s mouth, Rabi was
able to free himself.
Rabi
Majumdar
The
wife
Before
he was attacked and killed by a tiger, Minati Roy’s husband spent two
days worshipping a female deity, Bonbibi, believed to protect fishermen
and honey collectors.
‘On
that day, I was not in a good mood. Some unexpected occurrence
or bad news was going to come to my heart, I could predict it. I had
an anxiety feeling inside. Some misfortune is going to happen.’
Despite
her loss, Minati says: ‘The tigers are protecting the forest.
If there are no forests, no trees, there would be no life.’
Minati
Roy
When
I was in Kolkata earlier in the year, we were very close, geographically to a
massive mangrove region called the Sunderbans. Unfortunately it was the wrong
time of year for taking a trip to visit the area, but locals spoke of the Sunderbans as a place of great signifance,
both due to the tigers that lived there, and also due to lifestyle of the
people who lived and farmed in and around it, which ties in with Indian
folk-tales of yore.
All
that follows is thanks to Christian Aid, but it gives a greater insight into
the area, and the impact that climate change is already having. Ironically,
what the Kolkata residents didn’t seem to be aware of was that the hunger for
development that is going on in India, fuelled by the use of huge amounts of
coal-fired industry, is actually part of the cause of the climate change that is ultimately leading to so much poverty in their country.
However
that doesn’t give us in the West the excuse to say it’s therefore nothing to do
with us– we also have played, and continue to play, a massive part in the
fossil-fueled impact on climate change, and so need to look at what we can each
due to reduce our footprint on the earth.
The rising sea
The
Sunderbans is home to the tiger, and it is also home to millions of subsistence
farmers and their families who live in absolute poverty around the edge of the
region and venture into the mangroves in search of the fish, and crabs, and also to
harvest honey which can be found there and is of high value on the open market.
Sea-level
rise in the Sundarbans is double the global average.
Over the last 30 years, the region has lost an area equivalent to the size
of Manchester. Much of the remaining land has become salinated and unfit
even for subsistence farming.
Scientists
predict that much of the Sundarbans could be under water in 15 to
25 years. If the 13 million people living in the Sundarbans have to
migrate, this would be the largest migration in the history
of mankind.
The
relationship between the tiger and the humans is an important one, and feeds
into the greater issue of the balance of the whole ecosystem.
Kolkata-based
conservationist Joydip Kundu, explains why tigers attack and how they keep
millions of people in south Bengal safe from the devastating impacts of
climate change:
‘The
tiger is protecting the entire ecosystem. It is the fear of the tigers
that is keeping people out of the forest.’
The
Sundarbans was a land which was full of tigers, but People started entering
into the area from the British period. Then they started encroaching into the
tiger habitat and this is how conflict began.
These
people, they don’t have alternative livelihoods, so ultimately they
are falling back on the forest. They are venturing into the forest to tap
honey, to catch crabs, for fishing. If given a chance they are going
into the forest to cut down trees.
For
a tiger, the Sundarbans is a very poor habitat. a tiger in the Sunderbans
eats crabs, eats fish. And when a tiger sees a human walking inside
the forest, he will see it as its prey.
If
you take the tiger away from the landscape, people will be fearless and they
will go inside the forest and do all sorts of illegal activities – felling of
trees and other activities as well.
So
tigers are protecting the entire ecosystem. It is from the small fish in
the river to everything in the Sundarbans – the tiger is the sole
protector of everything. The moment you take the tiger out of the
landscape, the entire ecosystem will vanish.
It’s
like a chain. The tiger is protecting the ecosystem, the mangrove
ecosystem. And because of that, the mangrove shield is still there. The
moment this mangrove shield vanishes, the cyclones like Aila,
Sidr and all that will straight away hit the city of Kolkata.
It
is because of the Sundarbans mangrove shield that the entire south of Bengal
is safe.
India’s
Project Tiger estimates there are fewer than 100 wild Royal Bengal tigers left
in the Sundarbans. The World Wildlife Fund says there are more,
but predicts that most will be lost because of rising sea levels by the
end of this century.
Life
for the fishermen and their families is a hard and dangerous one, as shown by
the following stories. No-one wants to live life this way, but these people
have no other choice. If climate change continues, then even that choice will
be taken from them as their livelihood and homes are destroyed by rising sea
levels.
