To save a community in the Sundarbans

“Every time we build a house, a storm takes it away. Saltwater has damaged our crop fields. To earn a living, we get down in the river to fish but hardly find half of what we used to get earlier. Saltwater has decreased production of rice, jute and vegetables making it difficult for us to cultivate,” said 45-year-old Dipali Rani Munda, uncertainty in her eyes. 

Dipali lives by the river Kalinchi in Ranjannagar, a community in the ecologically important Sundarbans mangrove forest, 330km southwest of the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka. She is a member of the ethnic Munda community, one of more than 3 million indigenous peoples from more than 50 ethnic backgrounds found in Bangladesh.

On a cold winter day, reporter Asaduzzaman Sardar travelled over three hours from his base in Satkhira town to reach Dipali’s remote village. His journey took him through broken, rutted roads and thick mud, travelling by motorbike, boat and on foot, before he could finally reach the community and witness how a changing climate is threatening their livelihoods, health and culture.

Asaduzzaman is a local correspondent for the national media outlet, Bangla Tribune, and one of the 104 Bangladeshi journalists who received training and mentorship on weather and climate information system and climate journalism under BBC Media Action's Bridges project. Through his news story, he wanted to amplify the voices of this climate-vulnerable Munda community, which is in a constant battle for survival against the adverse impacts of climate change.

He said: “I wanted to capture how climate change is threatening the lives and future of this marginalised community. While coastal communities are exposed to climate change, a smaller ethnic community like the Munda is badly affected, losing livelihoods, culture and language day by day. I chose to tell their story because their quiet struggle and unheard voices needed to be brought into mainstream media.”

The Munda people have lived in this area for over 250 years, brought from India by landowners to cut down forests, prepare farmland and maintain cleared forest areas. As they established more permanent settlements, their livelihoods depended on the abundance of forest resources.

Cyclones, storms and tidal surges are not new to the low-lying Sundarbans. But in recent years, increasingly erratic and extreme weather mean the region has experienced an increase in climate-related emergencies. In 2020, cyclone Amphan damaged more than 12,350 trees in the coastal areas of the Sundarbans and claimed 23 lives overnight. In the last decade, the Munda community witnessed four cyclones in a row.

Asaduzzanman’s reports have explored how salinity intrusion and repeated floods or cyclones have been affecting different aspects of Munda life including their health, livelihoods, indigenous culture and even the food they eat.

What he heard is that life here is not what it used to be.

Dipali told Asaduzzanman that farming has become almost impossible now due to the saline water and soil. They depend on the rivers, canals and forests more than ever, for food and to earn a living. But rising seas, more unpredictable storms and declining biodiversity - a result of changing weather patterns and human activity - mean that even these natural resources are becoming more scarce day by day, leaving the community with little or no alternatives. “During fishing bans by government, we are not allowed to go to the river and there are no alternative livelihoods for us. We also lack sufficient food or clean drinking water. The water from our tubewells is salty. We suffer from skin diseases because of the saltwater,” she said.

Another community member, 79-year-old Ranjit Munda, said he had witnessed at least a dozen disasters in his lifetime - and worse in recent years.

He told Asaduzzanman: “Our ancestors cleaned wild parts of the Sundarbans forest and settled here. Since then, our struggle to survive began. But now, our entire way of living is under threat. The rivers, water and soil along the coast have become increasingly salty. We can no longer grow crops properly. We cannot find traditional foods like turtles, crabs, eels, barnyard millet, rats or snails, like we used to. Every year, floods wash away our homes.”

Reoccuring floods often destroy toilets and homes, worsening sanitation and safety in the area. Acute drinking water shortages mean that girls and women must walk miles to collect safe drinking water. And they spend long hours washing clothes and dishes in salty river water, contributing to skin diseases and chronic health problems.

The changing weather patterns are also affecting their religious traditions.

Mundas follow the Sarna faith and their worship is devoted to nature and their ancestors. But the Karam Puja, the community's largest sacred festival, is now just a distant memory. The karam tree is a symbol of prosperity, peace and good fortune, and essential for this festival. But it is no longer found in this area, and their festival field and stage have been submerged.

“The Karam festival depended largely on the karam tree. After Cyclone Aila [2009], waterlogging and rising salinity caused the trees to die. That is why our Karam festival disappeared. In the same way, our language and culture are slowly disappearing,” said Krishnapada Munda, executive director of the Sundarbans indigenous Munda organization, SAMS. He also told Asaduzzanman that while climate change has created problems for their community in many ways, one they feel most is the loss of traditional food and herbs that were used as medicine.

In this hard-to-reach area, there are no medical clinics, and families cannot afford long journeys for medical care. Healers have long used herbs in first aid and to treat routine ailments. But these herbs are becoming more difficult to find.

Today, only 27 Munda families are left in this village; many others have been displaced, having lost their homes to cyclones and storms. Asaduzzanman’s report, published by a national-level media outlet, revealed that nearly all of these remaining families have all but lost their livelihoods and are struggling with food insecurity. Once landowners, these families are now landless and no longer able to farm or fish, due to erosion, tidal surges and increasing salinity.

Our training and mentorship helped Asaduzzanman take a holistic approach towards his reporting. His initial story plan, which was focused only on weather and climate, evolved to reflect the community’s wider climate-related challenges. “The training and mentorship changed the way we used to view climate journalism. They taught me to go beyond simply reporting that blamed climate problems to explore what services or solutions people can access or receive to address them. The mentors’ guidance and support also helped me plan and organise my work more effectively to capture the wider picture.”

Asaduzzanman dug deep into the community's challenges and also reached out to local authorities and government agencies. He learned that no long-term measures had been taken to support this community. This report, he hoped, would force policymakers and authorities to recognise that the Munda community’s existence is at risk, and take effective action to protect their lives and improve their living conditions.

His report did catch the attention of the local administration. The district-level chief government official, District Commissioner of Satkhira, met representatives from the Munda community in his office, listened to their concerns and assured them that steps would be taken to support them. During this meeting, the representatives shared a seven-point plan, which included things like land rehabilitation and ownership rights, and ensuring government allocations for their people. The district commissioner promised to raise these issues to the relevant government division for sustainable change.

For Dipali, Ranjit and many other Munda families, climate change is no longer a distant threat. It is shaping their everyday lives, how they earn a living and whether they can preserve their traditions for the next generation.

By bringing these experiences to the wider public and local authorities, Asaduzzaman’s reporting has given a community often left out of the conversation a chance to be heard. His story shows how informed, climate-focused journalism can do more than report a crisis. It can help draw attention and action for climate-vulnerable communities.

Funded by NORAD, the Bridges project aims to make weather and climate information services more understandable, accessible and actionable for communities most affected by climate change in Bangladesh, Nepal and Kenya. Under this project 319 media professionals from three countries received training and mentoring in climate communications and journalism.