All delta stories begin with ‘Once upon a time’… but how do we define ‘time’?

Andy Large, Living Deltas Hub Director, March 2022

“Imagine time as a river…  All we know is that the river flows onwards.  On and on it goes, towards an unknown sea… Over and over again, new bubbles come to the surface and then vanish in time with the waves.  For a brief instant they are lifted on the wave’s crest and then they sink down and are seen no more.  We are like that. Each one of us no more than a tiny glimmering thing, a sparkling droplet on the waves of time… We leap up, look around us, and, before we know it, we vanish again...  But we must make use of that moment.  It is worth the effort.”    E.H. Gombrich, 1936.

 Two years ago, the Living Deltas Hub was starting to really ramp up its activity with autumn 2019 scoping trips to India and Bangladesh, a hectic ten-day series of Hub launches events in four delta social-ecological systems in tandem with research colleagues and FCDO in January 2020, all culminating in our second annual meeting in Kolkata bringing over 50 colleagues together from 10 countries.  Plans were made at Kolkata for a 2020 of busy field activity involving some 120 colleagues and a post-annual meeting trip took place to southwest Bangladesh to scope coastal sites.  Then… the world changed overnight.  In the time in between, the Hub has sadly lost two of its cherished colleagues after short illnesses, and others have suffered personal tragedy relating to Covid-19, yet through the entire period, the Hub never saw its ambitions to work for better delta futures dimmed in any way whatsoever and many areas of work continued through remote partnership and creative thinking, even when pandemic difficulties were amplified by the 2021 threats to ODA funding and the future of the entire GCRF Hub programme.

So, there was a feeling of some relief and excitement when our small team from Newcastle University landed in Dhaka in late February 2022 on a long-overdue trip to collect sediment cores from a series of baors (in geography textbooks variously termed oxbows, cutoff channels and floodplain lakes) in and around Khulna and Jashore. One of the few areas of work that has been completely halted during the pandemic due to the nature of the equipment required. Dr Richard Walton’s research aims to shed light on delta environmental histories, especially flooding and pollution, and so illuminate our understanding of delta system development (‘delta stories’) before human memory and so inform delta people of their landscape’s history and evolution.  The work also aims to define baselines for current conditions, just as climate change threatens to alter simply everything.  The story of that research and reflections on same is shared by Richard in another blog here, but as PI and Hub Director I want to reflect on the importance of face-to-face equitable partnerships post-pandemic, and the significance of our shared processes of knowledge co-production and multi-stakeholder capacity strengthening.

Our Bangladesh  trip began with face-to-face meetings with our BUET colleagues Salehin, Anisul, Ishtiaque, Sumon and Anis, and we were delighted to meet with Dr Shalia Mahmood and recently-joined colleagues from our Hub funded partner icddrb for the first time, learning about their important work ongoing since 2004 in Chakaria in the Cox's Bazaar region, exploring rates of miscarriage in the plains and comparing these with those closer to the sea where saline intrusion increasingly impacts freshwater resources.

Hub colleagues from BUET and Newcastle University reunited after a two-year hiatus.                             Photo credit: Andy Large

Ten days of fieldwork followed – up at 06.30, breakfast, out of the accommodation, kit loaded onto the microbus - along with our constant companion: a heavy, scary looking, wrought iron anchor with pointy ends sharp enough to keep us constantly on our toes in the back of the bus as we wended our way through the inimitable Bangladesh rural traffic and across a variety of road conditions.  Over two weeks we located a series of often very remote sites with the help of our BUET colleagues and our friends in the DSS (Department of Social Services under the Ministry of Social Welfare – many thanks here to our DSS friend and partner Dr Mahedi al Masud). On arrival at a particular baor, we negotiated the use of local fishing or ferry boats (to accommodate the heavy equipment and supplement the inflatable dinghy we had brought with us from the UK), inflated the dinghy, spent up to three hours out on the water in intense sunshine and returned to shore with our precious cargo of cores. 

Baor coring in progress with Andrew Henderson and Richard Walton hard at work. Photo credit: Andy Large

Then, deflate the dinghy, re-pack the 3D kit puzzle and tape the cores into the microbus and following some welcome refreshments, repeat the whole process in the afternoon at the next baor.  All this was done under the gaze of an intrigued group of all ages from the local community.  These ‘onlookers’ proved key to the story: as they were rooted in their landscape, they were keen to share their in-depth local knowledges on flood impacts, land ownership and management, fisheries practices, lake depth, and wet and dry season differences in land use and character.  All with a clear reference to ‘time’.  This locally rooted narrative and its relation to ‘time’ - or perceptions of time - is essential to the story at each site.  Of note throughout the trip was the typical generosity of the delta communities, often providing tasty food or refreshment and refusing much, if anything, in return.

Returning to shore with collected cores. Photo credit: Andy Large

Long hours were spent in the evenings extruding most of our sediment cores from their retaining plastic tubes so the tubes could be re-used to maximise the number of cores we could collect on the trip.  Cores were extruded and cut into 1cm slices, double-bagged, and labelled in Richard’s hotel bathroom before storing the samples in our small hotel room fridges (which were not really designed for that use).  The three of us departed Bangladesh with some 210kg of baggage, boats, kit, and cores.  Having to try to explain to the uniformed and armed soldiers in Hazrat Shahjalal Airport as to exactly why we were trying to get several bulky and heavy kit bags containing only ‘mud’ through the security scanner into the airport was a struggle. Where our increasingly panicked efforts to explain the nuances of delta environmental and flood histories somewhat spectacularly failed, all was rescued on production of the official letter from BUET which did all that the soldiers wanted – explaining we were there on official business.  What we were doing was less important than the permission to do something.

Extruding 1cm sediment sections from a core.  Photo credit: Andy Large

The unanticipated difficulty of explaining the purpose and relevance of our research to lay people in the airport leads me back to the title of this blog.  In his opening chapter of his brilliant ‘A Little History of the World’, Gombrich makes clear that all stories begin with ‘Once upon a time’.  In one village we tried explaining the collected core and concept of time over which it accumulated to small schoolchildren using Gombrich’s analogy of ‘Grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather’. “Say it slowly, and in the end you’ll be able to imagine it.  Then add one more.  That gets us quickly back into the past, and from there into the distant past.  But you will never get back to the beginning, because behind every beginning there’s always another ‘Once upon a time’.”. 

Sumon Raby using a collected core to explain the concept of time and environmental change to young schoolchildren. Photo credit: Andy Large

The same is true of the baors we visited; we may assume we have got back to ‘the beginning’ if we find alluvial clay beneath the organic layers in our core.  But what happened at that point on the delta before the time of first the river and then the cut-off baor?  Remember, behind every beginning there is always another ‘Once upon a time’.  And what about the implications for delta futures?  Those answers require multiple cores from multiple lake and wetland sites across all four of our delta social-ecological systems in Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam.

The bottom line is that none of this fieldwork and none of the insights into delta evolution are possible without the interdisciplinary, inter-institutional partnerships and collaborations which lie at the heart of our Living Deltas Hub.  It should always be remembered that, in working in this form of research partnership, both Hub parties become co-owners of the products and outputs.  This trip would not have been possible without the logistical support, organisational inputs, companionship and guidance in the field, translation of conversations, recommendations on food, and the general bonhomie and companionship of our colleagues in BUET and DSS.  All of that, too, takes time and to our delta-based colleagues and friends, sincere thanks for a happy and rewarding visit. 

We look forward to seeing you all again soon!