If you ask Sulata Sardar, a slum dweller in Kolkata, about the changing climate, she resigns: "The weather is getting worse and worse". For Sulata Sardar, global warming is a reality.
Ms. Sardar speaks from experience. In 2009, the then 40-year-old lived in the Sunderbans - 110 km south of Kolkata - in one of the largest mangrove forests in the world. On May 25, 2009, Cyclone Aila devastated the region, leaving over a million Indians and Bangladeshis homeless¹ - including Ms. Sardar and her young family. They moved to Kolkata to live with her relatives who lived in a slum in the eastern part of the city.
Fast forward to May 2020, when another super cyclone Amphan hit the region, damaging one million homes in the South 24 Parganas district (immediately south of Kolkata) alone. Mrs. Sardar's house was also destroyed. Her house, a fragile structure made of bamboo, makeshift pieces of wood and plastic. Like many others in her community, it was blown away by the storm. Calcutta Rescue immediately provided some of the materials to rebuild her house.
"It didn't used to be like this," laments Mrs. Sardar, "not when I was a child. We used to catch crabs and fish and sell them in the Sunderbans. People farmed the land. But with the regularity of these excessive storms, the salt water destroys the soil, making the land uncultivable. The ponds disappear along with the pond fish such as the rohu. Nowadays it is almost impossible to make ends meet in the Sunderbans," she says, "many people move to Kolkata.
Although the economic opportunities in the city are better, she still feels vulnerable to environmental influences. "It seems to be getting hotter and hotter, perhaps because the trees disappear with every cyclone," she says, "and we never know when the next cyclone will come.
Ms. Sardar has good reason to be concerned. According to the 6th Assessment Report of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Kolkata is among the top ten cities in the world exposed to the most dangerous multiple risks such as cyclones, floods, droughts, earthquakes and landslides and is most vulnerable to disaster-related mortality. "A city like Kolkata is doubly burdened by heat and humidity and the increasing frequency of cyclones," said climate scientist Anjal Prakash, one of the authors of the report. Of particular concern is that Kolkata is at risk of flooding by 2050.