Villagers in the Sunderbans erect mud embankments to protect themselves from the rising sea water, but it’s a losing battle. A Telegraph picture

Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and some of his ministers want the Sunderbans to be one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. They are being egged on by Kanti Ganguly, the minister of Sunderban affairs. But the residents of the Sunderbans are not cheering them on.

Testifying as a climate witness before the ongoing documentation being prepared by the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature, they say they are fighting a losing battle against the tides.

“In 1975, I built a house on the western fringes of Mousuni Island. We were protected by a seven-metre-high earthen embankment erected in the 1920s. As more and more people settled in the area, the mangroves started to thin and eventually the embankment gave away in 1992. About a hundred of us lost homes and land,” says Jalaluddin Saha, a farmer.

“I built another house 60 m inland. The new embankment was stronger and four metres higher. We kept raising the height of the embankment but the tidal water also kept rising. The embankment collapsed again in 2005, displacing 60 families.

“Either our island is sinking or the sea is rising. In 2005, I built another house about a kilometre-and-a-half inland from where my first house stood. We continue to lose land and agricultural productivity due to frequent incursions of salt water,” he says.

“I still remember the day when I lost everything. I went to the neighbouring island to fetch drinking water. While returning by ferry to my home at Lohachara Island, I found my sheep were afloat in the river and half my house had been washed away. Slowly the entire island got submerged,” recounts Jyotsna Giri, another climate refugee.

Climate change has affected the lives and livelihood of thousands, may be millions, in the Sunderbans. The scientific findings vindicate the experiences of the residents.

The School of Oceanographic Studies at Jadavpur University has found that there has been on an average an annual sea level rise of 3.14 mm in the area, which is responsible for eating away many islands, in part or in full.

“It matters very little whether the Sunderbans becomes a wonder or not,” says one of the farmers in the testimonial.