Pathways to Build Resilience Toward the Impact of Climate Change on the Indian Sunderban

The Indian Sunderban is located in the southern part of West Bengal. Sunderban is known for its precious mangrove ecosystem. Sunderban holds the world’s largest mangrove. Mangrove forest provides a huge amount of natural ecosystem services for the people of Sunderban. The mangroves of Sunderban have faced drastic losses, mainly from the impacts of climate change. Climate change plays a significant role, which makes the mangrove community vulnerable to its impacts. The people of Sunderban are highly dependent on the mangrove ecosystem; the loss of mangrove cover makes them vulnerable. The study found drivers and uncertainties of climate change that would destroy the mangrove community in future. The sea-level rise (cyclonic activity, erosion, and accretion), population rise (land cover change), and pollution (obstruct inflow of freshwater) are extreme threats for mangroves in Sunderban. The study shows that the changes need to be addressed through the government’s policies and a restructure of governance is required. In policymaking, the collaborative action of scientists, governments, and local people should be involved. The lack of local involvement created a gap in government policy, which increased the threat and risk to the mangrove ecosystem. The traditional knowledge of the local people of Sunderban needs to be incorporated into the management strategy of mangroves. Furthermore, in this study, the Sunderban wetland was studied based on the inundation patterns it has seen over the past 30 years. The study makes use of preprocessed Landsat images (1991–2020) to create annual composites from June to September. The composites were subjected to the short-wave infrared (SWIR) thresholding technique to produce inundation maps using Google Earth Engine (GEE).