India, Bangladesh join hands for Sunderbans

India and Bangladesh will launch a joint programme, the first such in South Asia, to save the Sunderbans from the onslaught of climate change, reports Chetan Chauhan. Green trail

Updated on: Mar 28, 2010, 01:28:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India and Bangladesh will launch a joint programme, the first such in South Asia, to save the Sunderbans from the onslaught of climate change.

Sunderbans, a world heritage site, is spread over 10,000 km in the two countries, and is home to several hundred tigers and half of rare mangrove varieties found in India, has been facing the risk of disappearance because of climate change induced rising sea levels.

“There will be a joint forum between India and Bangladesh for protection of Sunderbans ecosystem that spreads from India to Bangladesh,” Environment and Forest Minister Jairam Ramesh said.

Ramesh and his Bangladeshi counterpart Dr Hasan Mahmud will launch the joint programme in Kolkata next week, during which officials from the two countries will work out details of the programme. “They (forest officials) will work in close coordination to conserve the fragile ecosystem of the Sunderbans,” Ramesh said.

According to ministry officials, the two countries would work on conducting a joint census of tigers in the Sunderbans, 60 per cent of which are in Bangladesh. “As tigers migrate from India into Bangladesh and vice-versa, correct estimation of population may not be possible without a coordinated effort,” an official said. Indian Sunderbans have 60-70 tigers. Another area of cooperation is adaptation to climate change.

Although lakhs of villagers have built embankments against the rising seas, at least five islands are reported to have been submerged in the last 20 years. The latest is New Moore, whose submergence was confirmed by Jadavpur University through satellite imagery this week. The university’s head of oceanography department Sugata Hazra said the disappearance of the island shows how climate can affect everyone beyond geographical boundaries.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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