Impact of COVID-19 worsened matters in Sundarbans: UN ReportI

In News

• Recently, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction study stated that the COVID-19 worsened matters in Sundarbans.

About the report

• Title: “Understanding and managing cascading and systemic risks: lessons from COVID-19”
• Publisher: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction
• Coverage:
  • Indian Sundarbans
  • Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar
  • Indonesia
  • Guayaquil, Ecuador
  • Togo
• Outcome: the pandemic and measures to contain it have triggered cascading effects throughout societies and also reinforced pre-existing vulnerabilities.

Sundarbans specific study

• Double burden: In the Sundarbans, the people had to deal with the double burden of COVID-19 and cyclone Amphan.
  • Super Cyclonic Storm Amphan was a powerful and catastrophic tropical cyclone that caused widespread damage in Eastern India, specifically in West Bengal and Odisha, and in Bangladesh.
  • It caused $13 billion of damage, thereby becoming the costliest cyclone ever recorded in the north Indian Ocean.
• Dependence on natural resources: A significant proportion of the population in this area is dependent on natural resources for livelihood such as fishers, crab collectors, honey gatherers, beekeepers, and agriculturalists.
  • Due to COVID-19 containment measures, restrictions were placed on accessing these natural resources.

Significance of the report

• Before COVID there was little awareness that hazards such as floods, droughts or regional disease outbreaks could have a global impact.
• Extent of how interdependencies in our highly interconnected world are causing impacts to cascade within and across societies became fully visible only when COVID-19 began to spread and affect our daily lives.

Impacts on the economy and society

• Economic distress: across various sectors, actors and scales are reported in the workshops, media and publications.
• Impact on education: closing schools as a preventive measure for COVID-19 resulted in the disruption in education.
• Unstable internet connectivity: While the existing poverty was one barrier for families to pay for tools to access online education, unstable internet connectivity in the remote regions was another barrier.
• Forced marriage: Incidence of forced marriage among underage girls increased during the period of lockdown.
• Child labour: due to economic distress and disruption in education, many families engaged their children, especially young boys as child labour.
• Impact on women: Many women had to additionally work in fields on top of their other existing workloads which were otherwise done by hired workers.
• Open defecation: cascading impact on women’s hygiene and safety was seen by residents as restricted access to sanitation services, resulting from infrastructural damage and inundation, compelled some women to resort to open defecation.
• Human trafficking: it also resulted in short-term loss of income which aggravated child marriage and human trafficking, which can have long-term impacts.
• Food security: The reduction in income due to employment loss forced people to reduce meal portions and consume fewer food items.
• Prostitution: older women are being pushed into prostitution as there is no stable income left in the family.

Way forward

• Indian Sundarbans faced a wide range of impacts across sectors due to its interconnectedness and its existing vulnerabilities, which when combined with the impacts of the cyclone led to compounding of impacts and cascading of those across sectors.
• The main cascading impact in this region in the near and long term is due to economic distress caused by the lockdown.
• Study revealed that 88 percent of poorer household’s average weekly local income and 63 per cent of average weekly remittance income were lost due to COVID-19.
• The need of the hour is better understanding the interconnections in societies and the vulnerabilities within them.

Source: TH