This book primarily argues that livelihoods initially declined, but recovered to a small extent for the Shora Muslim community and to a greater extent for the Munda Indigenous community. This study specifically argues that, post-Aila, new livelihoods resulting from the intervention of NGOs have benefited, in particular, some young women and men in both communities. It also argues that the involvement of young men in brickfield work has reduced their dependence on the Sundarbans Forest. Similarly, the involvement of young Muslim women in goat rearing and gher farming has generated additional income that has made them financially resilient and contributed to the improvement in gendered relations post-Aila. Furthermore, I argue that there have been intersectional influences of gender, marital status and geographical locations in the reshaping of lives, livelihoods and gendered relations in the post-Aila Sundarbans Forest society. Little is known about the role of NGOs in establishing gender equality in economic and social terms in post-Aila contexts; this book addresses this gap and, in doing so, contributes to the debates on gender, area, cultural and critical development studies, and human geography. Furthermore, the book demonstrates that local and international NGOs have been proved to be crucial actors in altering gendered relations in the studied communities before and after the Cyclone Aila disaster.
Gender and livelihoods in the Sundarbans
This section discusses the ways in which livelihoods in the Sundarbans Forest are gendered. The Sundarbans is the largest mangrove forest in the world. The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) inscribed the Bangladesh Sundarbans as a âWorld Heritageâ site in 1997 (Chowdhury et al. 2008; Ortolano et al. 2016). This heritage site is in danger because of the increasing impacts of climate change and the development of large industrial projects (Ahmad 2019). The Sundarbans adjoins numerous rivers, including Meghna, Brahmaputra, and Kholpetuaya on the Bay of Bengal. Around 4 million forest-dependent inhabitants in the coastal areas obtain their livelihoods from the Sundarbans Mangrove Forest (Roy et al. 2013). This mangrove forest is facing many ecological hazards, such as climate-change-related extreme events, excessive rainfall in summer, increasing temperature, intense flooding, cyclones, tidal surges, and sea level rise (Ortolano et al. 2016). These hazards are gradually increasing and causing damage to the mangrove ecosystem and livelihoods (Roy 2019). As a result, the âregenerative function and land productivityâ of the Sundarbans are endangered by the increase of âsalinity intrusionâ and âcyclonic inundationâ (Nandy et al. 2013). In addition, most farmers are considered to be particularly vulnerable, resulting in loss of livelihoods, financial assets, agricultural yield and the worsening of debt problems (Chandra et al. 2017. The Sundarbans, as a reserved forest ecosystem, directly delivers a large number of services to neighbouring communities.
The mangrove ecosystem of the Sundarbans is an important part of Bangladeshâs broader ecological future. The future of coastal areas in South Asia generally is uncertain, due to the increasing impacts of floods, cyclones and droughts since the late 1990s. For instance, an increase of 1 metre in the sea level will lead to 15 million landless people being environmentally displaced (Dasgupta et al. 2011). The World Bank (2016) identifies three major climate-change-related challenges: âcyclonic inundationâ, âriver salinityâ and âsoil salinityâ. Such challenges, emerging from extreme weather events, will severely affect many poor peopleâs livelihood capacities, crop productivity, and cash income opportunities in the coastal regions. In particular, extreme weather events, like cyclones, destroy lives and rural livelihood patterns as a direct result of climate change. Six cyclones â Aila (2009), Mahasen (2013), Royanu (2018), Mora (2019), Fani (2019), Bulbul (2019) and, most recently, the Amphan (2020) â occurred between 2009 and 2020. These cyclones destroyed mangrove resources and caused massive loss of life, depleting large tracts of the Sundarbans Forest. The current body of literature documents the immediate impacts of Cyclone Aila and associated climate stressors on loss and damage, amount of income, and damage to livestock, poverty and inequality (Hallegatte 2014; Strobl 2011, quoted in Moniruzzaman 2019). Notably, the impacts of Aila led to the deterioration of the lives of the forest-dwellers, in particular, impacting upon their resilience and livelihood capacities (Roy 2013; Mallick et al. 2017).
While the economic effects of disasters are widely studied, less is known about their medium and long-term impacts on livelihoods. As Moniruzzaman notes in the context of Aila, âthere is a research gap to look into the impact of the recovery from the Aila in the longer period than immediateâ (Moniruzzaman 2019, pp. 1â2). These impacts are sizeable. Other research studies (Karim 1994; Kathiresan & Rajendran 2005; Barbier 2007; Walters et al. 2008 quoted in Uddin et al. 2013, p. 88) indicate that:
Ecosystem of mangroves, lying along the coastlines in the tropics and subtropics, provides [sic] a number of ecosystem services such as provisioning services (e.g. typical forest products, fisheries), cultural services (e.g. tourism, worship, educational research), regulatory services (e.g. protection from cyclones and storm surges, flood regulation, climate regulation) and supporting services (e.g. nursery ground of fish, nutrient cycling, habitat of biodiversity).
The aggregated services provided by the Sundarbans are crucial, not only for the rural economy within the coastal regions, but also for generating revenue for Bangladeshâs national economy (Uddin et al. 2013). In addition, the forest has continually provided resources to support the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities over generations.
For rural communities, community forest management is one of the ways to reduce poverty and foster economic development in South Asian countries. Gendered roles in community forest management can be analysed based on the typologies of forest management activities that women and men are involved in. In rural communities in Nepal, men are found to be more involved in community forest management than women (Adhikari et al. 2004). There has been little participation of women in the decision-making process in forest policies, and such decisions are dominated by elite men, who are the traditional decision-makers (Adhikari et al. 2004). Women with little command over functional literacy are often found to be unaware of the rules and regulations, goals and policies of community forest management, and their voices are rarely taken into consideration during decision-making processes (Adhikari et al. 2004). Women-run households are also highly marginalised in resource-gathering, being unable to collect forest products in the way that male-dominated households do; nor are they able to negotiate and influence forest management decisions on their own behalf (Adhikari et al. 2004).
The Bhola Island in Bangladesh was hit by a cyclone on 8 November 1970. In this regard, in her seminal book titled Catalyst: In the Wake of the Great Bhola Cyclone, Rohde (2014) notes the death of half a million people. This ethnographic study states that due to the cyclone a large number of people on Bhola island lost their loved ones. The immediate consequences also included the loss of the islandersâ livestock, wooden boats, possessions and mud houses. This cyclonic incident, together with the liberation war in 1971, is considered a significant humanitarian disaster in the history of Bangladesh. The evidence of the 1970-Bhola Cyclone as a climate-induced disaster indicates the severe impacts of natural calamities on the lives of the coastal population of Bangladesh. Due to its geographical location, rapid population growth and uneven urbanisation, Bangladesh has long endured severe consequences of floods, drought, climate-induced disasters and other humanitarian crises. The 1970 Great Bhola Cyclone, along with the subsequent civil unrest, displaced lives and livelihoods amongst the rural poor to great extent (Rohde 2014). The formation of Bangladesh in 1971 â itself partly motivated by the 1970 cyclone (Olson 2005) â caused the death of approximately 3 million people. The recovery from loss and damage resulting from these two disasters took many years. Moreover, natural disasters have continued to occur since independence, with greater frequency and severity due to climate change, humanitarian disasters and rapid unplanned urbanisation. Ever since the late 1970s, south-western Bangladesh has witnessed frequent occurrences of tropical cyclones, typhoons, heatwaves, flooding, drought and inundation. The consequences of these disasters since the independence of Bangladesh in 1971 have made it difficult to earn livelihoods in local economies.
In the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), the effects of environmental degradation are determined in gender-specific ways. The distribution of power, property, class and gender structures determine peopleâs relationship with nature. For example, in India, women have been at the forefront of the environmental movement (Agarwal 1992). Studies show women have greater knowledge of agricultural processes and tree conservation, equal involvement in the agricultural sector, and better knowledge of access to products harvested near bushes (Fortmann & Rocheleau 1985; Soroptimist International 2019). Another feature in developing countries is menâs greater involvement in cash crops, with women instead reliant upon subsistence crops. Hence, for gender equity, decisions about forest management need to include the various needs of men and women. However, other social dimensions complicate equity considerations. Often the better-off women participants are seen to dominate the formal and informal forest institutions due to their social status and education. The poorer ones are sadly left out of the planning process in sustainable forest conservation and management. Thus, the intersection between educated elite women and their social class does influence the decision-making around forest management.
The socio-cultural status and relationship of men and women also determine the nature of their domination over forest resources. In the tropical region, many forest-dependent communities follow a patriarchal tradition, whereby a masculinised system dominates the land ownership pattern and overall economic system. The poor men are found to be involved in over-exploitation of forest resources for commercial purposes. Though womenfolk play a crucial role in forest conservation in rural contexts in South Asian countries, their contributions are hardly recognised in customary tenure and land rights arrangements. While the global REDD+ (reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and foster conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks) policies acknowledge the need to integrate indigenous people in the forest policy process, they are yet to recognise the âdifferentiated needs of women within these communitiesâ (Brown 2011). Tensions between gender equity and the recognition of indigenous rights in the forestry sector therefore endure (Gurung et al. 2011). This is mainly influenced by the social norms and religious philosophies that determine ethnic differentiations, castes, rural-urban communities, and other such negative social influences. As a consequence, women always fail to gain ownership of natural resources, and their dependency on men in the male-dominated society persists (Aguilar et al. 2011). Even though they are responsible for 70 per cent of the worldâs work, they are disproportionately more vulnerable to climate change than men (Anzum 2019). Hence, the deforestation and degradation of forest resources do not only worsen the environmentâs outlook; these factors also increase the hardships of women.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that severe disasters particularly affect women and children, who account for more than the 75 per cent of displaced individuals (World Health Organization 2016; Roy et al. 2013). Cyclone Aila in 2009 devastated the life of these coastal men and women, in particular, who suffered the most in Bangladesh. Additionally, this country is also home to various ethnic minorities, who mostly live in hilly regi...
