Bengal should pay attention to Sunderbans' requirements: Expert

A top environmental expert from the World Bank Wednesday urged West Bengal to ensure that the requirement of the fragile Sunderbans mangrove forests is "adequately reflected" in the needs of the state as a whole and said it should implement the projects on cyclone mitigation and hydrology to create a database.

Tapas Paul, senior environmental specialist for the World Bank in India, said Bengal has been recently included in the subsequent phase of the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project and National Hydrology Project.

"West Bengal is surely a part of it. My request to them is to rake advantage of what can be done in those two projects.

"For Bengal, it is new. Andhra Pradesh and Odisha are already done with the cyclone project and hydrology project.

"In phase one, there were only southern states and there were 13 states in phase two, so now it is a national project," he said here at the international workshop on "Risk Management and Adaptation to Climate Change for Sustainable Growth in Deltaic regions".

The three-day workshop is being organised by the state's disaster management department in collaboration with WWF-India, EnGIO and World Bank.

The projects will help the state create a database on floods, cloudbursts, droughts and other events.

"Many states have progressed... the southern states have progressed the most, in the second phase other states came in and now it is likely that Bengal and other states will come in and develop the information system.

"Without information, you can't plan, you can't manage and develop. The project actually creates the data. They should implement it to the best of their ability," he said.

For Bengal, Paul stressed managing the problems in Sunderbans.

"I am requesting these two departments (disaster management and Sunderbans affairs) to see that the requirement of Sunderbans is adequately reflected in the requirement of the state as a whole.

"When you talk about hydrology, you normally talk about floods and then you will talk about flood plains. But Sunderbans has a special requirement so that should be there," he said.