Last month, CGP visited the Indian Sundarbans at the invitation of a West Bengalese farming cooperative, Chetana, and an Indian sustainable tech start-up, InQube. We were there to examine and discuss the climate change induced threats faced by the people of the Sundarbans, and the opportunity for using climate finance to address those threats.
The Sundarbans region is a mangrove area in the delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers. It consists of the Sundarban National Park, a protected forest reserve home to the Royal Bengal Tiger, and a ‘buffer zone’ to the east of the reserve, home to approximately 4.5 million very poor people, nearly all of whom are immigrants from other parts of India or Bangladesh. They were pushed to farm small parcels of one to two hectares of these coastal wetlands over the last 150 years.
The Sundarbans comprises the world’s largest area of mangrove forests. These forests are terrific at capturing carbon; but largely deforested to reclaim land for agriculture. Other factors we observed contributing to deforestation include erosion, wood collection for cooking fuel, and human traffic over mudflats for fishing and collecting molluscan shells. Despite this, mangroves can still be found along the water’s edge, and they play an important role in preventing further erosion, as a barrier against cyclones, and in minimising the impact of storm surges.
Our visit to this region was to discuss the threats, opportunities, aspirations and desires of the local community – most of whom are smallholder farmers. We spent time with a local farming cooperative, Chetana, founded 20 years ago to support the community, assist with the distribution of farmed produce, provision of medical services, and coordinate community initiatives. The Chetana community is made up of smallholder family farmers who tend to small plots, intensively farming their land to cultivate rice, vegetables, varieties of fruit and sometimes fish. Families may also have several cows, goats and chickens. Most of their harvest is for household consumption, the rest is provided to the local marketplace. Electricity is limited, and cooking is on mud stoves using wood or dried cow dung as fuel. Most households in the area are women-lead as economic vulnerability often means the male member of the house will have to work in a nearby town or city. As such, Chetana’s community and development activities are orientated to improving the livelihoods and wellbeing of women and children.
The farmers in the area grapple with numerous challenges, including cyclones, impacts of modern farming practices, human-wildlife conflict, and the risk of climate-induced displacement due to increasing temperatures, flooding from typhoons, sea level rise and increasing salinity. In conversations with Subimal Bera, the CEO of Chetana, he shared with us the loss of biodiversity he has observed, the timing of which coincided with the introduction of new chemical fertilisers. Gourhari Routh (Gourda), Chetana’s Chairman, spoke to his hope of a better future for his grandchildren and the responsibility he felt to play a role in rehabilitating the Sundarbans. Subimal and Gourda identified 2015 as the year that the community decided to get proactive on climate change. To that end, Chetana started planting mangrove saplings and other trees along the riverbanks and roadsides, converting to organic fertilisers and educating their kids about climate change.
We discussed the role that climate finance might play in their aspirations for the future, including:
- Catalysing for implementing regenerative farming practices,
- Providing clean cooking technology, which in turn slows deforestation and improves air quality and women’s wellbeing, and
- Funding the restoration of degraded mangrove forests in the buffer zone, to protect their farms and family AND to serve as a carbon sink.
Our visit to West Bengal – which was made during a month-long heatwave with daily temperatures exceeding 42c (107.6f) – underscored the urgency of climate action in places such as the Sundarbans. Setting up a carbon project is never easy, simple, or quick. It requires dedicated local partners that are community led, with strong networks and access to local governance bodies, and who are motivated by the long-term well-being of their members. As investors, we have the opportunity to support the efforts and innovation of organisations like Inqube and Chetana; through climate finance their challenges can be transformed into sustainable investment opportunities.
