Speaking at a national level meeting held at the Sundarbans on December 21, 2025, Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav criticised the West Bengal government for not being able to exploit the tourism potential of the biodiverse mangrove forest. “Sundarbans should expand its tourism. On an average 9 to 9.5 lakh tourists visit the Sundarbans every year while the figure is almost 19 lakh in Ranthambore,” said Yadav. The statement led to a series of refusals and counter-arguments from politicians, academics and experts on tourism as a source of livelihood in the ecologically sensitive forests.
Spread over 19,000 sq km in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, the Sundarbans is the world’s largest contiguous mangrove forest—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—and a Royal Bengal tiger habitat. The region faces frequent cyclones, floods and tidal surges. Its low-lying geography makes the Sundarbans extremely vulnerable to natural disasters, whose frequency is increasing with climate change. The region is also densely populated, supporting nearly 13 million people in the two countries. The Indian Sundarbans span about 4,000 sq km, primarily in the South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas districts of West Bengal, and are home to over 4.5 million people, many reliant on agriculture, fishing and forestry.
“Sundarbans cannot be compared to Ranthambore as its landscape, and challenges, are different. While tourism is key to local livelihood, we also need to think the scale and nature of tourism to be allowed in such a delicate ecological zone that already has a population of over 4.5 million,” Tuhin Ghosh, director, School Of Oceanographic Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, tells Down To Earth (DTE), adding that no carrying capacity assessment has been done for the area so far.
Biswajit Roy Choudhury, a member of the state wildlife board, tells DTE that the difficulties in accessing the Sundarbans forest, and its primarily river-based forest tourism, minimise the possibility of locating wildlife, making it less attractive to tourists compared to the likes of Ranthambore, where sightings are far more likely.
A senior forest department officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, says that the recent Union government clearance for expansion of Sundarbans into the second biggest tiger reserve in the country is testimony to the state government’s success in managing the forest area. “Despite this we have received much less funds compared to several states, be it in mangrove plantation or conservation of tigers,” the official tells DTE. “West Bengal has the largest share of mangrove cover in India, with its Sundarbans region accounting for over 42 per cent of the country’s total mangrove area; but under the Union government’s signature programme in mangrove conservation, it is only third in terms of recipient amount,” says an-other senior official from the forest department.
The need for economic opportunities in the Sundarbans has been highlighted by a recent study which says that nearly three-fifths of the people surveyed reported migration in families triggered by disasters and loss or limitation of livelihoods. “We studied the primary input of people from 48 human-inhabited islands of Indian Sundarbans and found that agriculture and fishery, the primary livelihoods, are most affected due to climate change. While agriculture is the most affected with a score of 4.27 at a scale of 1 (least affected) to 5 (most affected); fishery impact score is 2.52 in the same scale,” Rushati Das, a researcher associated with the study, tells DTE. The study was published by Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA), a coalition of more than 250 civil society organisations working in eight South Asian countries. “Out of a sample of 75 students spread over nearly 10 islands, in the age group of 12 to 16 who in average have faced around four major cyclones during lifetime, around 60 seemed completely traumatised while speaking about the disasters they faced and were under persistent fear about the next disaster in line,” says the researcher.
The report tries to assess non-economic dimensions of climate-induced loss and damage in the Sundarbans. The concept of non-economic loss and damage captures what conventional economic assessments cannot measure—“the trauma of displacement, the anguish of broken social networks, the silence of disrupted education, the grief of cultural erosion, and the unseen suffering of psychological distress,” says the report. “Out of 75, 40 reported loss of productivity in agricultural land, 25 reported either full or partial damage of houses, 30 had to shift to disaster shelters or relatives house due to disasters, while 30 were compelled to miss the schools for over two weeks due to disasters,” says the report.
“We have to keep in mind that already a lot of illegal tourism is happening in Sundarbans defying coastal zone management norms and National Green Tribunal orders, and both the union and state government are responsible for that,” Subhas Acharya, a retired state government official and Sundarbans expert, tells DTE. “I hope that the Union government is not planning to commercialise Sundarbans in the name of expanding tourism, like it is doing in the Aravallis or the Andamans,” says an activist, requesting anonymity.
This article was originally published in the the February 1-15, 2026 print edition of Down To Earth