The Project

Social Resilience in the Sundarbans Delta: Eliciting Needs-based Grassroots Action through Cross-Group Engagement (ENGAGE)


Why this project

The ENGAGE research project is 3.5 year research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation under the Solution-oriented Research for Development (SOR4D) program.

This project has explored the social resilience in the Sundarbans, the largest contiguous mangrove forest in the world. Located in the tidally active lower deltaic plain of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) basin, the Sunderban Mangrove Forest and the inhabitants of the contiguous areas interact within an intertwined coastal social-ecological system (SES) highly exposed to multiple hazards. International Organisations recognise that the inhabitants of the river delta are at the forefront of the climate risks.

The conventional approach to the conservation of Sunderbans Mangrove Forest often relies on top-down social relations and rarely considers local knowledge and practices as a tool for social and ecological systems’ resilience. However, the forest provides provisional and regulatory ecosystem services which are most of the time maintained by the communities as a part of their adjustment practices aiming at sustaining their livelihoods.

The major research questions of the project focus on why Sundarbans need to be co-perceived as ‘riskscapes’ by the state, NGOs and island communities, how disaster risk reduction in the delta can be achieved through wide-spectrum situated adaptive mechanism anchored in lived realities, and how social resilience can be upscaled through transdisciplinary knowledge coproduction and implementation strategies with immediate (coping), intermediate (adaptative), and long-term (transformative), high-impact solutions.

To answer these questions, the project has been using a systemic approach that includes a two-step methodology:

1) Historical ethnographic explorations to understand the cultural, social, and economic dynamics of the deltas;

2) Pilot experimentations to test the effectiveness of situated adaptive practices in reducing disaster risks and promoting social resilience.  

Empirical investigations have been be conducted in the vicinity of the Sunderbans, on both sides of the border, in India and in Bangladesh. This study will contribute to the bilateral exchanges across transboundary Sunderbans and to the debates on the governance of the Sunderban-related SES, which have become more relevant in view of climate change. Finally, together with local stakeholders and based on the research findings, the project will reflect on the potential of a more ‘fluid’ governance to better deal with uncertainty and complex socio-ecological processes around the forest, agricultural production, and populations’ livelihoods.

The project’s goal is to promote social resilience in the delta by co-producing knowledge and implementing solutions anchored in local realities that address the root causes of vulnerability to climate risks. Adaptive community practices and alternative livelihood strategies will be co-produced through inter-institutional and inter-sectoral initiatives and trans-disciplinary engagement to sustainably conserve coastal commons for the well-being of the island’s communities.

The outputs of the project will be shared on a website that will serve as a transdisciplinary platform for dialogue and collaboration among different actors, including local communities, policymakers, scientists, and practitioners.

The project aims at empowering local communities by bringing their knowledge and practices to the forefront. It will foreground local stories of resilience to climate risks through everyday lived realities. The project will contribute to a paradigm shift in conservation, recognising the importance of local knowledge and practices in promoting social resilience to climate risks.

Infograph 1: Project Time Line


Project relevance

While the conventional approach of climate change adaptation in the Sundarbans relies on top-down technical solutions and the managed relocation of communities, our ‘living lab’ experimentations build on existing situated adaptive practices with the goals to enhance social resilience, reduce multiple risks and provide alternatives to outmigration.

Infograph 2: Single disaster approach versus social resilience framework

Objectives of the project

To understand plural accounts and interpretations of the Sundarbans’ ‘riskscape’ produced by state and non-governmental actors and diverse members of the local communities. It seeks to support situated adaptive practices that enhance social resilience through experiments in inland fishing and integrated farming based on transdisciplinary engagement across the political boundaries of the Sundarbans.

Infograph 3: From climate risks to riskscapes

The project aims

  • to explore, understand and map climate risks and disaster impacts on the Sundarbans, accommodating plural accounts of the state, NGOs and the island communities, towards
  • stimulating situated adaptive mechanisms to harness social resilience in and of the delta, through
  • trans-disciplinary engagement to craft high impact pathways across (post)development interventions at the ground level, unleashing
  • cross-learning possibilities from bilateral exchanges across transboundary Sundarbans

Infograph 4: Knowledge coproduction during experimentation phase

The major research questions

  • Why the Sundarbans needs to be co-perceived as ‘riskscapes’ accommodating plural understandings of climate risks that entails and accommodates the ‘multiple disruptive risks’ perspective over the ‘single disaster’ approach?
  • How disaster risk reduction in the delta awaits co-design and co-implementation of wide spectrum of situated adaptive practices evolved across time and space and anchored in lived realties and cultural belief systems of the delta?
  • How social resilience can be up-scaled through transdisciplinary knowledge coproduction and implementation strategies with immediate, intermediate and long-term, high impact solutions along interactive adaptive (transboundary) governance?

Infograph 5: Co-envisioning transformative change through interactive adaptive transboundary governance

Systemic approach and methodology

Our systemic approach includes a two-step methodology of

  • historical ethno-graphic explorations and
  • pilot experimentations (inland fish farming and integrated farming) in the translocal project sites, co-engaging and eliciting multiagency with sustained implications for transboundary Sundarbans.
ENGAGE will apply an array of overlapping, multi-modal, participatory and interactive methods to accomplish the two-step methodology. Historical approaches (archival reading and analyses, oral history techniques, memory mapping exercises) will be used to qualitatively explore climate risks and community livelihoods responses in the delta and the specific study area. Participatory GIS and transect walks will be conducted to generate local unit scale information on existing resource base and socio-ecological infrastructures.

Ethnographies along more conventional (focus group discussions, case studies, key informant interviews, etc.) and participatory (on-site informal conversations, multi stakeholders engagement field workshops, participatory systems mapping, etc.) innovative and visual methods (case stories, ethno-visual narratives through photo essays, participatory videography, etc.) will enable project teams to map and document situated adaptive strategies, locating array of institutional arrangements-adjustments and socio-cultural traditions shaping these practices, transforming over times.

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