The fisherman, his wife, the tigers and the Sunderbans

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.