Photo essay: A disappearing island in the world’s largest mangrove forest

The remaining voters on Ghoramara in West Bengal had one thing on their minds in India's election

A tree leans over an eroded riverbank on the southern part of Ghoramara Island in the Sunderbarns region, in India's West Bengal state. Situated 150km south of Kolkata, Ghoramara has been called the 'sinking island'. All photos: Reuters

A man catches fish in a pond on Ghoramara Island, which has lost nearly half of its area to soil erosion in the last two decades and could completely disappear within a few more decades if a solution is not found

People board a ferry on Ghoramara Island as it departs for the mainland. As people have migrated away from the island, especially youths, transport links with the mainland have fallen to just five ferries a day

Aparna Maiti, 26, is carried home on a rickshaw after being treated for heat stress on Ghoramara Island, in the Sundarbans. Home to more than 4.5 million people, the Sundarbans, which is shared by India and Bangladesh, is the largest mangrove forest in the world

A man puts up an election poster on the island. The residents of the tiny, ecologically sensitive island are concerned about survival as they fight to save their homes from disappearing into the sea in the face of rising sea levels and increasingly fierce storms

Bimal Patra, 60, and other local residents listen to a radio during an evening at a market area on Ghoramara Island, where the population has declined over the years, falling to 4,000 in 2020, from an average of 7,000

Manimala Sagar, 35, places a solar panel light out for charging outside her house on Ghoramara Island in the Sunderbarns, an area regarded as a climate change hotspot as the planet gets warmer

Debasish Paul, 62, cleans solar panels on top of a flood shelter on Ghoramara Island. Researchers say climate change has driven up sea surface temperatures, resulting in seasonal storms from the Bay of Bengal becoming much stronger and more frequent over the past decade

Pratap Das, 51, casts a fishing net into the Hooghly River on Ghoramara Island. The island's inhabitants were once predominantly dependent on agriculture, with most families farming rice and betel leaves. But cyclones in 2020 and 2021 flooded the fields with water high in saline, leaving the soil barren

Children play in the ruins of a house that residents say was damaged during Cyclone Yaas on Ghoramara Island

Men sort plastic from waste inside a community composting unit on the island. Some residents have planted mangrove saplings to try to reduce waterfront erosion, while the local administration displays notices across the island banning single-use plastic and polystyrene. A solid waste management system has been put in place

Construction workers rebuild Khasimara Nimno Buniyadi School at a new location, after the school's previous building was swept into a river following erosion in 2021, on the island

A man loads his goats into a ferry to transport them to the mainland for sale, on Ghoramara Island

A child rests on her mother's lap aboard a ferry on its way to the mainland

Sukumar Giri, a 61-year-old farmer, and his wife Sita Rani Giri, 55,winnow rice outside their house on the island

Dibakar Das, 63, looks through the window of a painted wall featuring the name of a candidate and the party symbol of the All India Trinamool Congress, a regional political party. The fight for survival by residents of the island has put climate change front and centre for politicians trying to win their vote

The largest mangrove forest in the world is in trouble. The Sundarbans, which sit in the delta on India’s east and the south-west of Bangladesh, are an exceptional ecosystem, formed by the confluence of three great rivers. These mangroves have increasingly borne the brunt of cyclones, rising sea levels and warmer temperatures.

In 2021, the erosion was so severe that a school in a village in one of the many low-lying islands was washed away. The steady depletion of the environment, especially in the past decade, has drastically affected the existence of people who live among these forests, on small islands such as Ghoramara, which is about five square kilometres.

Agricultural conditions have also been devastated, with the soil turning barren from water that is too saline to farm either rice or beetle leaves that were once predominant crops. Hundreds of families have had to move away from this gradually sinking island 90km south of Kolkata, the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. It is natural, then, that the daily concerns of the approximately 4,000 people for whom the island is still home are vastly different from those of urban dwellers in mainland West Bengal.

In India’s recently concluded elections, the voters in Ghoramara were distressed about their literal survival more than any other concern. “For us, the protection of the island is the main issue in this election,” said Patra, one of the 3,700 registered voters in Ghoramara. The inhabitants of the island are fighting to save their homes. Even as parts of the Sundarbans carry the tag of Unesco World Heritage Sites, parts of these expansive forests are also endangered.

The state government, that is the Trinamool Congress, led by trusted matriarch Mamata Banerjee – who again won a resounding victory on June 4 – had announced a project, supported by the World Bank, to strengthen the embankments, and seeking Dutch expertise to do so, given that one thirds of the Netherlands lies below seawater. Ms Banerjee’s continued tenure could ensure that these plans stay on track to prevent further degradation of the mangroves.

For the people of Ghoramara, however, troubled by the evident erosion, distant political developments don’t assuage the very real fears of their home being swallowed by the sea.