Climate change has turned the waters saline, making agriculture unviable and forcing them to turn to fishing. For women in the marshlands of Sundarbans, this switch is not just about livelihoods but also coping with the debilitating health impact on their lives.
Caught in a vicious trap that means spending hours waist-deep in the very waters that no longer nurture their fields, the women face a battery of menstrual, urinary tract and other infections.
“With agriculture becoming unviable due to the increase in salinity of the water because of sea level rise, more and more women are becoming dependent on fishing. This means their exposure to saline water is also increasing,” Nihar Ranjan Raptan, director of the NGO Goranbose Gram Bikash Kendra (GGBK) who works in the Sundarbans, told PTI.
