Every June, the gates of the Sundarbans swing shut. The forest department posts notices, patrols intensify, and permits are suspended. For three full months, no one enters, not fishermen, not honey collectors, not tourists. The intention is noble, no question about it. The breeding season demands quiet; wildlife needs shelter from human interference. But when those notices reach households in Datinakhali of Satkhira or the villages of Shyamnagar, they carry a different message: three months of hunger. This is not a case against environmental protection. This is a question of fairness.
The Sundarbans must be protected on this. As climate change batters Bangladesh’s southwestern coastline with growing ferocity, this mangrove forest is no longer merely a natural resource. It is a living shield. The Bangladeshi portion of the world’s largest mangrove forest covers roughly 6,017 square kilometres and shelters 528 plant species, 355 bird species, more than 136,000 spotted deer, and around 125 Royal Bengal Tigers. It holds back cyclones, tidal surges, and salinity intrusion like a biological fortress. During Sidr, Aila, and Amphan, the forest saved lives in numbers that statistics alone cannot capture. Scientists are clear that as sea levels rise, the Sundarbans will only become more vital. The June-to-August window is when most fish, crabs, shrimp, wildlife, and vegetation reproduce. Rivers fill with spawning fish. New saplings push through the soil. Keeping people out during this period measurably supports biodiversity recovery. The annual ban, formalised since 2021, is scientifically sound and ecologically necessary. Protecting this forest is not just about saving tigers or deer; it is about drawing a survival map for future generations.
A portion of those very people are paying the steepest price, in silence. The fisherman who casts his nets in the forest waters all year to feed his family. The honey collector whose earnings put his children through school. The woman who sells golpata leaves to pay back her microfinance instalment. For all of them, three months of prohibition means three months of zero income. No alternative employment. No government support. No savings. Only debt remains, and the grinding wait for the season to crack open again.
Ramzan Mia knows this wait better than most. When the ban comes down, so does any hope of a steady income. He borrows from neighbours, lets loan instalments slide, and watches his children’s school fees pile up unpaid. But hold Ramzan Mia up as a symbol and you miss the point; he is not an exception. Across these villages, the same story plays out in a thousand different households, with different names and the same empty hands. According to local elected representatives, forest-worker organisations, and coastal civil society groups, several thousand households that depend on the Sundarbans are pushed directly or indirectly into income crisis during the ban. They include fishermen, honey collectors, woodcutters, crab trappers, trawler workers, boat operators, and labourers tied to the tourism economy.
The situation is made worse by accelerating climate impacts. Unseasonal floods destroy coastal crops. Rising salinity degrades farmland. Frequent cyclones wreck boats and fishing nets. As a result, forest-dependent communities already lose large portions of the year to inactivity. Add a three-month ban on top of that, and many of them go without meaningful income for close to half the year. Here lies a brutal irony. Those who bear the least responsibility for climate change whose carbon footprints hover near zero suffer its sharpest consequences. And then the same people are asked to surrender three months of earnings in the name of environmental protection. Meanwhile, those who run factories, sit in air-conditioned offices, and travel by air face no such sacrifice. Only the poor at the forest’s edge are asked to give something up.
This is where the state’s failure becomes most visible. When fishing bans are imposed in the sea, coastal fishermen receive government food assistance and rightly so. So why is the Sundarbans treated differently?
In 2025, Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, Divisional Forest Officer of Sundarbans East Division, mentioned to journalists that a proposal for food aid and worker incentives had been prepared and sent up to the ministry. Since then, silence. No announcement, no rollout, no sign that the proposal moved beyond paper.
None of this is beyond the state’s capacity. The same government that provides food assistance to sea fishermen during marine fishing bans has the framework, the precedent, and arguably the obligation to do the same for forest workers during the Sundarbans closure. That alone would take the sharpest edge off three months of hardship. And it need not stop there. These are able-bodied workers who know this landscape intimately; they could be put to meaningful use in reforestation, canal clearing, mangrove restoration, and building out the ecotourism infrastructure that officials love to talk about but rarely fund. They earn; the forest benefits. Over the longer term, training programmes in aquaculture, handicrafts, and environmentally sustainable enterprise can reduce dependence on forest entry entirely. Environment specialists call this approach ‘just transition’ the principle that those most harmed in the shift toward environmental protection deserve active state support. The burden of conservation cannot be offloaded entirely onto the shoulders of the poor.
The Sundarbans is our national pride, our country’s shield, our inheritance. It must be preserved for future generations, for climate resilience, for biodiversity. But the people who live alongside it are citizens of this country too. Their hunger, their households, and their children’s schooling fall within the state’s responsibility as well. The policy of saving the forest and the duty of protecting its people are not in opposition. A responsible and far-sighted state can honour both. The only question is whether the will exists to do so.
The writer is a development worker. Email: [email protected]
