Belonging to a poor and marginalised community, life has always been harsh, but more so recently for the Indigenous (Adivasi) Munda community in the village of Horihorpur in Koyra Upazila, Khulna district of Bangladesh. Horihorpur village is situated adjacent to the riverbanks of Shakbariya near the Sundarbans Forest.
This Munda community faces some of the harshest realities of climate change and has undergone severe threats to their livelihoods due to Cyclone Amphan and Cyclone Aila which hit the Sundarbans, paired with the long-term effects of climatic disasters, such as tropical cyclones, floods, salinity intrusion, famine, and heat waves.
The tribal Munda Community at Horihorpur village lives as they do on the western coast of Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, their survival depends on working in mostly traditional shrimp and crab farms, and some in paddy fields, or in brick kilns. However, continuous climate change adversities have caused socio-economic downfalls and have broken the back of the Munda community.
“I have never seen disasters of this magnitude which was Cyclone Amphan and Aila ever before in my life. Never seen so much flood either,” lamented 60-year-old Bashonti Munda, from Horihorpur village.
“I used to work on a crab farm where I earned a monthly wage of Taka 2000-3000 on which my family and I survived. The two deadly cyclones followed by floods, salinity intrusion in water and more, have left us with nothing and I struggled to provide three meals to my family,” says Shunil Munda from the community.
Of the total 45 indigenous communities in Bangladesh, as per the Sundarbans Indigenous Munda Sangstha, there are about 6,000 people of the Munda community living in the plains and 1,200 families in the six upazilas of Khulna and Satkhira districts in the Sundarbans. Living on the coastal edges of the country these are one of the most climate vulnerable and marginalised communities.
About 50 families of the Munda community, which traces its roots back to India, live in this Horihorpur village and all of them struggled to make ends meet.
“The economic condition of the people living in this area is grim,” says Md. Rokunnuzzaman who is the Upazila Nirbahi Officer of Koyra Upazila. Even in normal times, the Munda community members are barely able to make ends meet. Now, with shrimp and crab cultivation work drying up due to such disruptions in the climate, they have no work, he added.
“Long before, at one time this community owned land in Bangladesh but lost it bit by bit to natural calamities, and now almost all the Munda families are entirely landless, which makes them even more vulnerable to such natural disasters. These families live on ‘khas land’ that is land controlled by the government,” says local Chairman of Uttar Bedkashi Union, Sardar Nurul Islam.
To ensure that these left behind climate vulnerable communities were integrated within a steady revenue stream, Local Government Initiative on Climate Change (LoGIC) project is promoting local-led climate-adaptive livelihoods by providing a Community Resilience Fund (CRF) to vulnerable climate women. LoGIC is a joint initiative led by the Local Government Division of the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development, and Cooperatives, supported by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), European Union (EU) and Sweden.
LoGIC profiled the most climate-vulnerable marginalized communities in Horihorpur village, particularly women. The women were divided into smaller groups where each member received a CRF of approximately BDT 29,000 as direct support to undertake climate adaptative livelihoods with immediate benefits for their income. LoGIC supported these groups through every step to develop a profitable climate-adaptive business model such as planning, financing, pond leading for cultivation. The project also provided training, creating access to financial institutions, and establishing market linkages for them.
The groups did crab cultivation again because they had prior expertise with it, yet not in traditional means this time. Long before the present methods of crab culture were introduced, the old “Gher” aquaculture was used by the Mundas in coastal areas to raise crabs. Crab farming in Gher saw a severe fall due to the salinity of the water trapped in the fishing pond. So, the women with CRF funds were taught the process of farming crab by building “Pata” or “Elbaster boundary” around the crab point instead, which only costs BDT 14,000. The women are also taught to keep the water in check regularly so that the crabs don’t get affected by a virus or die.
With this new learning by using climate adaptive techniques, 35 women in Horihorpur village did crab cultivation. They invested a total of BDT 350,000 and by working together as a group for a month, they made a total profit of BDT 385,000, where each woman individually gained a profit of approximately BDT 11,000.
The groups did crab cultivation again because they had prior expertise with it, yet not in traditional means this time. Long before the present methods of crab culture were introduced, the old “Gher” aquaculture was used by the Mundas in coastal areas to raise crabs. Crab farming in Gher saw a severe fall due to the salinity of the water trapped in the fishing pond. So, the women with CRF funds were taught the process of farming crab by building “Pata” or “Elbaster boundary” around the crab point instead, which only costs BDT 14,000. The women are also taught to keep the water in check regularly so that the crabs don’t get affected by a virus or die.
With this new learning by using climate adaptive techniques, 35 women in Horihorpur village did crab cultivation. They invested a total of BDT 350,000 and by working together as a group for a month, they made a total profit of BDT 385,000, where each woman individually gained a profit of approximately BDT 11,000.
The groups did crab cultivation again because they had prior expertise with it, yet not in traditional means this time. Long before the present methods of crab culture were introduced, the old “Gher” aquaculture was used by the Mundas in coastal areas to raise crabs. Crab farming in Gher saw a severe fall due to the salinity of the water trapped in the fishing pond. So, the women with CRF funds were taught the process of farming crab by building “Pata” or “Elbaster boundary” around the crab point instead, which only costs BDT 14,000. The women are also taught to keep the water in check regularly so that the crabs don’t get affected by a virus or die.
With this new learning by using climate adaptive techniques, 35 women in Horihorpur village did crab cultivation. They invested a total of BDT 350,000 and by working together as a group for a month, they made a total profit of BDT 385,000, where each woman individually gained a profit of approximately BDT 11,000.
