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Saving the Sundarbans means including its people

Published : Saturday, 10 October, 2026 at 1:03 PM

By Ankhee Siddika

Is the Sundarbans merely a forest? Or is it a living landscape of rivers, wildlife, settlements, livelihoods, culture and local economies, with people as part of the picture?

The question matters because it changes how we think about tourism. Fishers, honey collectors, woodcutters, farmers, women and small traders have lived at the edge of the mangroves for generations. Their lives are as much a part of this landscape as the tigers. Protecting the Sundarbans is therefore a question about an ecosystem, a river system, biodiversity, culture and livelihoods all at once.

So the debate should not be whether tourism should exist. The real questions are which kind is sustainable, where it can happen, what infrastructure is acceptable, how many visitors an area can bear, and how local people can become fair partners in the economy it creates.

Two Different Worlds

The Sundarbans spans about 10,000 square kilometres, and roughly 60 percent of it lies in Bangladesh. UNESCO recognised it as a World Heritage Site in 1987. Its core zone is strictly protected. The surrounding impact zone, declared an Ecologically Critical Area in 2019 and extending 10 kilometres outward, is home to at least 1.4 million people. It holds villages, farmland, markets, schools and government offices.

Tourism in the two zones is very different, yet we tend to treat them as one. Many resorts near the Sundarbans stand in populated villages, on privately owned land, with a river between them and the forest. Local authorities have issued trade licences to businesses there, while the Forest Department has itself built structures inside the core zone.

Meanwhile, when most people say “Sundarbans tourism” they mean the core zone alone. More than fifty licensed launches and vessels enter it daily, and the disturbance to wildlife habitat, feeding and breeding is a growing concern. Few of us ask what a well-planned tourism model in the impact zone might look like.

A Policy Vacuum

The gap is partly bureaucratic. The 2017–36 Bangladesh Forestry Master Plan reviewed eight policies and two laws, but not the National Tourism Policy 2010. As a result it does not treat tourism as a tool for conservation at all. The tourism policy, for its part, allows development in the Sundarbans in consultation with the Department of Environment, yet does not say whether that means the core or the impact zone.

This is the product of ministries that do not talk to each other, and it persists even though tourism reportedly earned Bangladesh about US$65 million from the Sundarbans in 2021.

Tourism That Spreads the Benefit

Tourism’s great strength is that its benefits travel. A factory mostly enriches its owners and workers. A tourist’s spending can reach the boatman, the farmer, the fisher, the shopkeeper, the woman entrepreneur, the folk singer and the craftsperson. Around the resorts I have worked with, about 300 families depend directly on tourism, and many more benefit indirectly.

This matters for conservation. Many forest-dependent people have turned to illegal activity out of poverty and a lack of alternatives. Prohibitions alone have rarely secured lasting protection. The surest way to keep people out of the forest is to offer livelihoods beyond it. A young man can become a local guide. A woman can earn from cooking, handicrafts or cultural performance. A fisher can ferry tourists. A farmer can supply the kitchen.

Once people see that a living forest brings visitors, keeps boats busy and sells local goods, protecting it becomes a way of protecting their own future. Stopping tree-felling, abandoning deer snares or giving up poison fishing then becomes a choice, not just a response to enforcement. Conservation that excludes people does not last. People have to be its partners.

Culture Is Conservation Too

The Sundarbans is also songs, stories, the legend of Bonbibi, folk belief and a boating culture passed down for generations. Tourism can help revive traditions now fading: local performance groups, folk songs, oral histories and village life itself. The result can be an educational experience of nature, people and culture, and not merely sightseeing.

In the impact zone, this “eco-cultural” tourism could include homestays, community resorts, local food, honey and beeswax products, handicrafts and river-and-wildlife education. In Dacope, where roughly 158,000 people live across the three unions of Banishanta, Kailashganj and Sutarkhali, a cooperative community tourism model deserves serious consideration.

I would go further. The core zone should host only tightly managed eco-tourism, with perhaps 10 percent of total visitors. The impact zone, with its capacity to absorb people, could receive the other 90 percent. To me, that is a settled and sensible model for the Sundarbans.

Responsible, Not Just Approved

None of this means every resort is green. Adding “eco” to a name does not make a building ecological. Unplanned construction, poor waste management, heavy water use and noise all damage the environment, and they must be assessed.

The same goes for river tourism. Banning vessels is probably unrealistic, since the Sundarbans can only be seen from the water. What is needed is regulation: caps on boats and passengers, fixed routes and speeds, quieter engines, limits on noise and light, mandatory return of waste, oil-spill prevention, protection of sensitive breeding seasons, and a gradual move to low-emission technology.

Above all, the rules must come first. Enforcement should follow clear law, regulation or standard operating procedures, and those who break them should be held accountable.

My Own Journey

I first went to the Sundarbans in 2015 for research, not to start a tourism business. What I found was hunger, debt, salinity, disaster and joblessness. I saw honey collectors who could not repay their advance loans because they were paid unfairly, and women damaging their health catching shrimp fry in saline water.

I tried small steps, such as buying sewing machines and arranging training in watermelon farming, but they went only so far. It seemed the forest was the only source of income these families had, so the question became how to use it differently while keeping it alive. I joined Golokanon, then helped create Irabati and Piyali, and other ventures followed. Mistakes were made, partly because no clear SOP existed. They can be corrected. The goal was never to defend one enterprise, but to save people and forest together.

Beyond Closure

Where a structure truly harms the environment, action is necessary, and the law must be enforced. But we should also ask what comes next. Without alternative jobs, people will return to forest-dependent work. Without a clear tourism policy, unregulated ventures will multiply. Without environmental standards for boats, controlling land-based tourism alone will not protect the forest.

The answer must be integrated: plan first, then approve, attach conditions, monitor, and hold violators accountable. That calls for the ministries of Civil Aviation and Tourism, Environment, Forest and Climate Change, and Local Government to work together with local people and experts.

The Sundarbans does not belong only to the Forest Department, the Department of Environment or the tourism ministry. It belongs to the fisher’s family, the honey collector, the farmer, the boatman, the woman entrepreneur and the child who will inherit it. It belongs equally to the tiger, the deer, the birds, the fish and the trees.

The forest will stay, and so will the rivers, the tigers, the deer and the birds. So, if we get this right, will the people and their dreams. The real measure of success will be the day a local person says: “Saving the Sundarbans is not only the government’s job. It is everyone’s, because if the Sundarbans survives, so do we.”