Sunderban dying of global warming

WHAT ON EARTH: Nearly a half of the 102 Sunderban islands in India spread over nine and a half square km.

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Keywords: Forest, Water

Sunderban: It's closer than you think and it's slightly worse than you can imagine. Global warming is slowly claiming the Sunderban and as the local boatmen and farmers only feel it in the drying lakes and dying crops.

Nearly a half of the 102 Sunderban islands in India spread over nine and a half square kilometers are uninhabited. The region has been witness to an abnormal rise in the sea level in the last four decades. This in turn has led to massive erosion. About a fifth of the southern part of the delta, the heart of the tiger reserve is already submerged.

The threat of the Sunderban mangrove reserve on account of global warming is now manifest not only at the level of some of the rare and highly endangered species of flora and fauna, but also human habitat near and far.

Forty six-year-old Poresh Mondol has been steering over the waterscape of the Sunderban for over two decades and though he's never heard of Global warming, every summer he is increasingly worried.

It continues to get hotter by the day. If this goes on, soon the river will dry up and the Sunderban too might vanish.

At the current rate of erosion scientists see a loss of 15 per cent of farmlands and more than 250 square kilometers of national park in the next two decades. Agricultural yield too has been falling because of rising salinity of the water and soil. Yet very few ask 'what on earth' is going on.