Rising coastal activities exerting pressure on Sundarbans: Experts

India’s Sundarbans is facing increasing pressure owing to peoples’ needs and multiple uses that coastal and marine areas can be put to, a group of researchers from West Bengal told an international conference.

“The marine environment of Indian Sundarbans which includes the adjacent coastal area, is facing a number of pressures arising out of the need of people, and the multiple uses that coastal and marine areas can be put to,” a research paper presented by a group of researchers from three colleges of Kolkata, said.

The paper was presented during the fifth International Conference on Ecotoxicology and Environmental Sciences held at Kochi from February 15-17.

“These pressures contribute to the depletion of marine resources and degradation of the marine environment,” the paper by Ranita Bose, Shreyasee Roy, Jayanta Sutradhar and Debabrata Mukherjee, said.

“Not only man made hazards, the natural or environmental stresses are quite prevalent in this coastal part of the country and together all these factors are affecting the normal natural process of this important estuarine ecosystem,” it said.

World heritage site Sundarbans National Park, major portion of which is in India’s West Bengal, is an estuarine mangrove ecosystem with a unique ecological features and bio resources.

The major threats that are creating environmental stresses are increase sea surface temperature, unpredictable rainfall, sea level rise and coastal erosion, the paper mentions.

It mentioned that factors like extreme weather events like storms, cyclones, tsunami those happen almost in frequent manner are affecting the ecology and the economy of huge population inhabiting this coastal habitat, it added.

The researchers said that it needs holistic approach through the prudent management to create a sustainable development in this important coastal region of the country.