Sundarbans – the largest mangroves:

threats, climate change and

sustainability
Md. Monirul Islam, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Fisheries
University of Dhaka
Bangladesh
Email: [email protected]

International Mangrove Webinar, The celebration of World Mangrove Day 2020

Sriwijaya University, Indonesia. Date: 27-07-2020
 Contents

Threats to
Location & Livelihoods, Climate Saving
Animal Plant Ecosystem Sundarbans Development
extent of overexploitation change Sundarbans:
biodiversity Biodiversity Services and Pressure
Sundarbans and pouching impacts Pathways to
Responses
Sustainability

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 Location and Extent of the Sundarbans

THE SUNDARBANS (~10,000 km2)

- UN Educational, Scientific, and
Cultural Organization World
Heritage Site,
- Ramsar site
- Class 3 tiger conservation
landscape of global priority

Indian part Bangladeshi

(40%) part (60%)

SUNDARBANS

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Picture: Google map
 Gangetic dolphin

Mangrove
Buffy Fish Owl Royal Bengal Tiger
horseshoe crab Puffer fish

Tiger shrimp

Mullet fish
Ruddy Kingfisher Crab
Animal Biodiversity of Sundarbans
355 species of birds Monitor lizard
49 species of mammals
87 species of reptiles
14 amphibians Monkey
Spotted deer 291 species of fish
Snake
Tree Frog Estuarine Crocodile

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 Plant Biodiversity in Sundarbans Common mangrove plant species
334 species under 245 genera (Prawn 1903)
Of the 50 true mangrove plant species recorded, the 1. Sundari (Heritiera fomes) Sundari
Sundarbans alone contain 35 2. Milky mangrove (Excoecaria
1 2 3 agallocha) Gewa
3. Groran (Ceriops decandra),
Goran
4. Mangrove apple (Sonneratia
apetala) Keora
5 6 5. Cedar mangrove (Xylocarpus
4 mekongensis) Passur
6. Cannonball mangrove (X.
granatum) Dhundul
7. White avicennia (Avicennia alba)
Bain
7 8 9 8. Date palms (Phoenix peludosa)
Hantal
9. Nipa palm (Nipa fruticans)
Golpata
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Source: http://en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Sundarbans,_The
 Ecosystem Services from the Sundarbans
REGULATING SERVICES SUPPORTING SERVICES
PROVISIONING SERVICES CULTURAL SERVICES
(Benefits obtained from (Services necessary for the
(Product obtained from regulation of ecosystem (Non-material benefits production of all other
ecosystem) processes) obtained from ecosystem) ecosystems)

 Food (fish, shrimp,  Protecting from  Aesthetic value  Ecosystem process

crab, honey, cyclones maintenance
mangrove apple )  Recreation and
 Regulation of climate ecotourism  Life cycle maintenance
 Raw material/Forest
product  Protection from floods  Cultural identity and  Biodiversity
Protection from heritage maintenance
 Medicine 
riverbank erosion  Mental well-being and
 Employment health
 Purification of water
and air

Sources: https://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.300.aspx.pdf, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-20595-9_1 6

Threats to the Sundarbans and Responses

• Development Pressure
• Overexploitation and
pouching
• Climate change impacts
• Increasing GHGs and
temperatures
• Sea-level rise
• Increased cyclone and
storm surge
• Salinity intrusion
• Erosion
• Impacts on
Sundarbans-
dependent people 7
 Development Pressure
Activities
• Increased industrial
development
• Shrimp aquaculture
• Increases in shipping
traffic
Impacts:
Source: Google map Diversion of Ganges water at Farakka Barrage
• Salinity intrusions
in India increases water and soil salinity (Islam
• Sedimentation & Gnauck 2011). PC: The Business Standard
• Water pollution (JULY 26, 2020)
• Habitat loss
• Loss of food resources for higher biodiversity
• Accidental mortality of rare and threatened vertebrates
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Islam, S. N., & Gnauck, A. (2011). Water salinity investigation in the Sundarbans rivers in Bangladesh. International Journal of Water, 6(1-2), 74-91.
 Responses to development pressure
• Reduce/stop funding for projects that damage the Sundarbans
• Strict protocol to be followed by development projects
• Strict regulations on land clearing, landfilling, waste disposal, and
wastewater discharge.
• Negotiations for uninterrupted water flow through Farakkah
barrage especially during outside of monsoon season

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 Livelihoods, overexploitation and pouching
Nearly 0.5 million people depend on the Sundarbans for their livelihoods

Activities
• Pouching of tigers and deer Impacts on Sundarbans
• Felling of best quality trees (e.g. C. decandra and N. fruticans) • Degradation of the
• Honey extraction including whole hives natural habitat
• Post Larvae (PL) collection
• Resulting in loss of
• Use of destructive fishing gears and methods
• Fishing and crab collection on ban season biodiversity
• Human-wildlife conflict leads to antagonism towards wildlife
conservation initiatives.

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Responses to overexploitation and
pouching
• Reducing livelihoods dependency
• Monitoring and strict implementation of laws
• Building more awareness
• Use of technology for monitoring
• More collaborations with international community
• Research for improvement of harvesting techniques

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 Climate change
impacts on the
Increasing GHGs and Sundarbans
temperatures
• Global CO2 417 ppm (May 2020)
• Increased acidity in Sundarbans waters
• Near Sundarbans – temperature increased
at 0.5˚C per decade (Between 1980 and
2007) (Sengupta et al. 2013; Mitra and
Zaman 2015).
• There are temperature extremes in the
region (Met Office 2011)
• This accelerated increase in temperature
and acidity of waters has severe
implications on aquatic life.
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 Climate change
impacts on the
Sea-level rise Sundarbans
• Current: Sea-level around the Sundarbans rising @ 6-12
mm/yr (BWDB 2006, WWF 2020) (global ave. 2-3 mm/yr)
• Future: 28 cm sea level rise is likely to occur in the next 50–
90 years (Loucks et al. 2009)
Impacts:
- Vanishing of Sundarbans in the long run (already some
Image by Jonas Gratzer for Mongabay
island vanishes)
- Salinity intrusions
- Degradation of habitats and ecosystems (tiger habitat in
Bangladesh’s Sundarbans would decline by 96% and the
number of breeding individuals would be reduced to
less than 20 by next 50-90 yrs(Loucks et al. 2009)
Loucks, C., Barber-Meyer, S., Hossain, M. A. A., Barlow, A., & Chowdhury, R. M. (2010). Sea level rise and tigers: predicted 13
impacts to Bangladesh’s Sundarbans mangroves. Climatic Change, 98(1-2), 291.
 Climate change
Cyclones and storm surge impacts on the
Sundarbans
• Increased cyclonic storms hitting the Sundarbans in recent decades (3
within one year)
2009 2019 2019 2020

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 Climate change
impacts on the
Salinity intrusion Sundarbans

• Due to both seal-level rise and development pressure (e.g. Farakkah

barrage)
• Increase of 2 PSU per decade around Sundarbans over the last decades
(Mitra et al. 2009), much higher than that documented (Solomon 2007)
for the average in the Indian Ocean (0.01–0.02 PSU per decade).
• A lot of impacts on ecology; especially Heritiera fomes or Sundari – is
under serious threat of the salinity intrusion as it grows on low saline
water.

Mitra A, Banerjee K, Sengupta K, Gangopadhyay A. Pulse of climate change in Indian Sundarbans: A myth or reality? National Academy Science Letters. 2009;32:1–7.
Solomon, S. (ed.). 2007. Climate change 2007—The physical science basis: Working group I contribution to the fourth assessment report of the IPCC, vol. 4, 996 pp. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 15
 Climate change impacts
Erosion on the Sundarbans

• There is ~1.2% (or 11,500 ha) net erosion in 35 years in the Sundarbans (Quader
et al. 2017)
• Both climatic and non-climatic reasons

PC: The Hindu JULY 01, 2017 PC: Quader et al. 2017
Quader, M. A., Agrawal, S., & Kervyn, M. (2017). Multi-decadal land cover evolution in the Sundarban, the largest mangrove forest in the world. Ocean & Coastal Management, 139, 113-124. 16
 Climate change impacts
on the Sundarbans
Impacts on Sundarbans-dependent people
100

Mathurapur (n = 65) Datinakhali (n = 45)

% of fishers affected by climatic hazards during 1981-2018

80

60

40

20

0
Cyclones Floods Riverbank erosion Salinity intrusion

Climatic hazards

Source: Islam MM, Rahman MA, Paul B & Khan MI (2020) Barriers to Climate Change Adaptation: insights from the Sundarbans Mangrove-Based Fisheries of Bangladesh. Asian Fisheries Science (In Press)
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 Responses to climatic impacts
• Climate change mitigation
• reduce the GHG emission
• enhance GHG sinks
• Resilience and adaptation to
climatic hazards (for people)
• Ecosystem-based adaptation
(Nature-based solutions)
• Transformational adaption

Characteristics of Transformational adaptation

(Modified from Fedele et al., 2019)

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Fedele et al. 2019. Transformative Transformational adaptation to climate change for sustainable social-ecological systems, Environmental Science & Policy, 101: 116-125.
 Saving the Sundarbans: Pathways to
Sustainability

Nested sustainable development–the economy

dependent on society and both dependent on the
Environment (Giddings et al. 2002)
Common three-ring sector view of sustainable
development 19
Giddings, B., Hopwood, B., & O'brien, G. (2002). Environment, economy and society: fitting them together into sustainable development. Sustainable development, 10(4), 187-196.
• 1st Incourse exam?

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Any Question?

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