The Bengal Delta is undergoing significant changes, characterised by rising salinity levels. As the world’s largest delta – and home to over 100 million people across India and Bangladesh – these changes have large social, economic and political significance.
India’s recent political controversy in Sandeshkhali, West Bengal, highlights how adaptation to deal with rising salinity can go badly wrong: alleged landgrabs, economic oppression, and abuse.
The key adaptation response to higher salinity in the Bengal Delta has been the transition to brackish water aquaculture, particularly focusing on shrimp-led growth.
But the Sandeshkhali situation highlights that, unless we pay attention to the political economy (who has access to resources, and who can allocate them), such adaptation measures may exacerbate existing inequalities and forge an unjust transition.
High salinity, fish farms
Sandeshkhali is located north of the Indian Sundarbans region. This landscape is undergoing rapid and irreversible social-ecological change due to an increase in water salinity; the availability of freshwater for human use and ecosystems is shrinking.
Changes in freshwater discharge from rivers are considered the single most important reason for rising water and soil salinity; the 1975 construction of India’s Farakka Barrage across the Ganga River in West Bengal is frequently singled out as a primary reason for these changes. (Other factors also…
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