Dumuria fishing village, Gabura Union, Bangladesh.
Authors: Emilie Cremin, Cai Ladd, Tasnim Kamal Shamma
Just before the Covid-19 outbreak occurs, on the 9th of March 2020, our WP4 team had the chance to go to Bangladesh for a scoping trip in Satkhira division in the Bengal GBM delta. As time is flowing, we’d like to share with you our experience. While discovering and meeting the community of the Dumuria village in the Gabura Union, located on the opposite bank of the Sunderbans. We hoped to find out about the local communities’ livelihoods in the fringe area of the Sundarban forest. When we arrived at the port, we were warmly welcomed by the villagers, and quickly set up two focus groups heat what they had to say. Our blog is a snapshot of life along the banks of the Sundarban.
The community here relies almost exclusively on fishing from the Sundarbans forest as a source of income. Landings are primarily crab and the “Pomfert”-“Rupchanda” fish. Honey from the forest is also an important income source. Women tend to catch the smaller fish, whilst fishing for larger catch (15 to 30 kg) is almost exclusively done by men. Approximately 2% of the community do not fish, and instead cultivate shrimp. There has been little change in the type of work done by parents and grandparents. For the ~2% of the community which do not fish, there has been a shift away from rice cultivation (from 15-20% to ~1 %) to shrimp aquaculture. In this group, only the elderly and children work on the shrimp ponds. Few of the community cultivate the high value shrimp because they do not own land to establish their own ponds. Most of the surrounding shrimp ponds are owned by outsiders.
Following the 2009 Aila Cyclone, water quality was markedly degraded by saline intrusion. There has been no noticeable improvement in water quality since the cyclone. Cyclone Aila also caused significant erosion of the harbor and channel banks. The 2019 Bulbul Cyclone was not as destructive as Alia, because Bulbul struck during low tide and the Sundarbans forest protected the land from high waves. However, erosion caused by Bulbul did occur further east and north of Dumuria. Fortunately, there is little river flooding in the area. A consequence of coastal flooding has been to increase the sand content in the soil, away from clay mud and pitch dominance.
Despite the increasing hardships, migration rates haven’t been that high. At most, a single member of a family may leave to find work elsewhere in the brick or rice industry.
Over the past 10 years, channel banks have widened. The eroded material has silted up the channels, resulting in an increase in bed level of around 5 feet. Fish stocks have declined; however, the variety of fish being caught has increased. The increase in fish diversity is mostly because more marine fish are now being caught. Crab stocks have been increasing. Changes in fish and crab stock and diversity have become apparent over the past 20 years, however, the community were unsure why these have changed. Fishing pressure has been increasing because fishing technology is becoming more advanced and the local population is growing. Many of the goods are exported to Dhaka. Kolbari is where honey, crab and fish are commonly sold.
On the river bank. A woman is drying leaves from the mangrove used as firewood. Boats are getting ready for their next trip to the Sundarbans.
On the other side of the embankment, the ponds are used for everyday life: washing dishes, washing clothes, bathing etc. But this water is salty. They get drinking water from a tube well 4-5km away.
Permits are required in order to allow any resources to be taken from the legally protected Sunderbans forest. A separate permit is required for each resource (e.g. fish, crab, honey). The Forest Office require a recommendation from the local chairman before a permit can be issued. They are issued on the assumption that the worker has the required skills (hunting and gathering) to gather the resource. Those skills are learned from early childhood.
Statistics on the main livelihoods of Gabura Union by Tasnim
Golpata Honey collection is only done during a two-month period from mid-March to mid-May. Honey collectors need to travel, they can reach their destination by boat in one day. But it can take two days to reach the places where honey is abundant. This is in the deep forest. They usually stop in the evening and will stay at night in the forest. In the early morning, they go deep into the forest to collect honey and return to their boat by dusk. Their access to the forest depends on the duration of the permit. Permits cannot be obtained for 2 months over the winter period, and so honey collectors turn to ocean fishing for those two months.
Woman are catching crab to sell them in the crab nurseries. Some people said that crabs are increasing. However, they were not consumed in the past. Local people are not eating crabs. It is advice to not eat them in the Muslim culture. It is considered as “Makruh”. The crab is only reared for the market.
The duration and cost of a permit depends on which resource is being harvested (see table). The current price for a fish permit is 1500 Taka, whilst the crab permit costs between 200 and 300 Taka. The difference in cost reflects the value of the resource; fish fetch a higher price at market than crabs. From year to year, the length of time over which a permit is valid does change. For honey collecting, the permit was valid for 30 days 2 years ago. Last year, the permit was valid for 7 days. This year, the permit length was set at 15 days. It is important to remember that travel time is included in the permit. If the number of days decreases, then less resources can be found and collected. Nevertheless, the villagers observed that the mangrove is in a better health since the restriction was imposed.
The harvests (honey filled barrels, fish, and crabs) are sold at the local market in Kolbari, 7 km away after crossing the river. It is sold to merchants from larger cities such as Khulna, who will sell the produces for a higher price in Dhaka.
Though the discussion, the members of Gabura community has shared with us their ecological knowledge on the ecosystem services provided by the mangrove social-ecological system. They have stated that they are benefiting from those resources (wood, honey, wild fish, crabs, fruits, etc.), provisioning services, for their livelihood. Moreover, the mangroves are also providing regulating services as they absorb and mitigate the effects of storms, cyclones, riverbank and coastal erosion. Therefore, the conservation measures applied to the mangroves are respected. To involve and inform the communities about the policies, seminars (or rallies) are frequently organized by the Forest Department and NGOs. The seminars aim to foster good practice on the sustainable and safe use of the Sundarbans and its resources. Moreover, honey collectors were recently given protective equipment to safely gather honey, funded by NGOs.
The meeting with local communities has given us a very rich outlook on their everyday life in the delta. We could understand how the communities are related to the Sundarbans forest, which gives them natural resources essential for their livelihoods. We could also understand that the lack of access to the forest or to the land may decrease their subsistence capacities. To adapt with the current situation, some of the community members choose to migrate to the cities, Satkhira, Khulna or Dhaka to work as Rickshaw puller or van puller. Sometimes young boys are going away to work in town, while girls and the rest of the family will stay in the village. Therefore, the mobility of people and goods remains important for local livelihoods as we could see it with the construction, reparation uses of boats. Navigation is an essential activity for the local economy. It brings in particular tourist from around the world to visit the Sundarbans, who benefit from Sunderbans recreational services. This gives another source of income for local communities.
"A macaque - related to the crab-eating macaque species (Macaca fascicularis)- is steering at our WP4 group while visiting the Sunderban visitor centre. In that site macaques are not only eating crabs and other mudflats sea food. They also enjoy to eat chips, bananas and other processed food introduced by tourists".
During festival period the access to the Sundarbans is restricted. Need to get a permit to enter the area.
Finally, we hope to come back again to go further into the research and draw a better understanding of the tipping points that leads to irreversible changes in the socio-ecological systems and find sustainable nature-based solutions to reach the Sustainable development goals.
Resources
Videos on honey harvesting in the Sundarban forest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTRLBCpRJ4I
Documentary on the gathering and processing of Mowal Honey:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsXeA3xEz6k
News on the challenges faced by workers: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/18/the-sundarbans-crab-farmers-battling-climate-crisis-and-pirates-bangladesh
