Professor Hazra says that the mangroves will help to protect the coast from erosion and will also provide nutrients for fish and capture carbon in their extensive root systems and help to keep carbon in the soil.

The ship has sent another two inflatables with crew to plant alongside people from the local community and about a hundred students who cycled here.

It’s easy work on a beautiful beach. There is a man digging the holes, and we take the protective wrapper off the mangrove saplings, put them in the hole, pull in the soil and sand around them and make sure they are secure and move on to the next one.

The tide is advancing so it is not long before we have to move off the beach and beyond the banks to higher ground to continue our planting. The students are fast and efficient, it’s like a planting drill.

I spend some time planting with some of the local women and even though I don’t speak Bengali and can’t communicate with them, it is a wonderful experience to spend some time putting our hands in the soil together to plant the saplings.

As I plant I think about what this means for the local people. They are already feeling the impacts of climate change, and sea level rise threatens their whole island.

Last week I was on the island and met a few people that have already moved from nearby islands that disappeared. While the government gave them space on Sagar they said it was very hard for them at first. They had nothing but a piece of jungle when they arrived and even now their quality of life has diminished significantly – they have less space to live and less food for their family.

The people here are subsistence farmers and fishermen, where would they go and what would they do if this island disappears under the sea? They will become climate refugees, and with so many of them here it is hard to imagine that their will be as much space for them elsewhere.

So they are fighting hard to keep this island. We saw a solar farm with many panels on the way here, there are four wind turbines down by the beach where the meeting was yesterday, they have built several dykes to protect their crops from the sea, and now they are planting mangroves. They are doing all they can, but unfortunately it may not be enough if the rest of us don’t take action against climate change.

At the next Kyoto meeting in Bali we will be asking the world to take tough action on climate change, but also to remember the people in the Sundarbans and others around the world who will be affected by climate change and make sure there is a global effort to help them.

You can also help. Sign our petition asking the Indian government to ban ordinary lightbulbs by 2010. We are trying to collect a million signatures by next year to support the ban – we need your help.

Tracy

More photos from the day:

photos by Peter Canton/Greenpeace