How BEDS is leading community-driven regeneration in the Sundarbans Mangrove Forest

By GroundBreakers Team

When a cyclone is coming, people still need to make a living. Sustainable livelihoods build resilience for local communities.” — Maksudur Rahman, Chief Executive, Bangladesh Environment and Development Society (BEDS)

The Bangladesh Environment and Development Society (BEDS) was founded in 2010 to “create harmony between humans and nature.” BEDS centers local communities in such work as climate change adaptation and mitigation, sustainable livelihoods, wildlife conservation and protection; children’s rights; and gender development. 

BEDS advances regenerative practices to build both community and environmental resilience to climate shocks in the Sundarbans Mangrove Forest region. Rahman’s work demonstrates the power of community-driven regeneration where ecological restoration also creates opportunities for sustainable livelihoods. 

 

The Sundarbans Mangrove Forest

 

BEDS works within the Sundarbans Mangrove Forest, a UNESCO world heritage site at the delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers at the Indian-Bangadeshi border. The Sundarbans is the world’s largest remaining contiguous mangrove forest home to a vast range of biodiversity of both flora and fauna. Due to the dense swamp of islands and wetlands, the Sundarbans have traditionally served as a “green wall” absorbing storm surges and protecting human residents from encroaching cyclones. 

Due to climate change and illicit logging, the Sundarbans is currently experiencing one of the fastest rates of coastal erosion in the world with the sea advancing about 200 yards a year in some regions. Communities in the Sundarbans are on the frontlines of climate change with increased vulnerability to cyclones and flooding. Rising seas bring saline waters, harming agricultural yields and traditional agricultural practices including rice farming. Threats to subsistence farming and decreased economic opportunities have caused over a million coastal residents to migrate north. 

BEDS works with local residents to build economic, community, and climate resiliency in the context of increasing storms and flooding. Through regenerating the mangrove forest and creating opportunities for sustainable livelihoods, including honey harvesting and green business, BEDS supports communities both adapt to and mitigate climate change.

BEDS’ Strategies

 

Natural Resource Management: BEDS developed a sustainable management system for natural resources in local communities including drinking water. Rahman’s team collected information and qualitative data from local community members on access to clean drinking water to incorporate traditional methods into systems design. 

BEDS designed a water filtration system in the form of a “water ATM” where water is accessed after ATM cards are inserted into the system. The water ATM is self-sustaining through the use of maintenance fees paid by villagers. 

If you don’t build a management system for natural resources, the work isn’t sustainable. This is why we installed management systems for drinking water in local communities,” explained Rahman. 

Sustainable Livelihoods: “When a cyclone is coming, people still need to make a living. Sustainable livelihoods build resilience for local communities.” said Rahman. 

Coastal communities in the Sundarbans are particularly vulnerable to climate shocks including cyclones and flooding. BEDS builds local resilience through engaging communities in assessing their own risks and capacity needs as well as strengthening livelihoods through business training and environmental conservation programming. 

Rahman’s team engaged local honey traders in the Sundarbans region to improve their marketing and bring greater social and environmental returns for the harvested honey. 

“Previously, the traders would harvest the honey and pay large fees to middlemen. We worked with them on marketing, packaging the honey, and developing a brand. Before they sold the honey for around 300 Taka per kilo. Now they sell their honey for almost 1,600 Taka per kilo. This is a nature based solution,” explains Rahman. 

BEDS’ engagement with honey traders also improved natural resource management for honey through the approach of a minimum harvesting of resources for a maximum financial return. 

Ecosystem Regeneration for Community Resilience: “We are losing our mangroves and need to regenerate them by involving local communities. Local people are the guardians of the mangroves,” said Rahman. 

BEDS works to regenerate the Sundarbans through mangrove restoration, aquaculture agriculture, and sustainable natural resource harvesting. Regeneration of the mangrove forest also builds community resilience to environmental and economic shocks. Through the power of solar energy, BEDS has addressed local electricity shortages and strengthened emergency preparedness and response in the Sundarbans region. The light from the solar stations and generators also helps families and communities reduce the damage caused by storms.

 

Best Practices

 

Social Enterprise Model: The success of BEDS is rooted in being structured as a social enterprise and working to create new green businesses as economic drivers in communities.

“The sustainability of the organization is very important. Setting up a social business is an important solution for local organizations driving long term work with communities. Depending on donations is not sustainable,” explained Rahman. 

Grassroots and Community Driven Engagement: “If you implement just a project, it won’t be sustainable. Think of the problem you want to solve and the real issues on the ground level because the project is just a short timeframe,” stated Rahman. 

BEDS works closely with local communities and is deeply committed to supporting grassroots change. The community driven nature of BEDS is informed by a commitment to tangible action rooted in local knowledge and leadership. 

“We’ve seen that there is a gap between the conversations of high-level organizations and the grassroots work. The conversations are important but only meaningful with real implementation. We need to ask the questions around what are the outputs from these conferences and conversations?” Rahman explained. 

Challenges Faced

 

Team Retention: BEDS can sometimes struggle to maintain workers for long periods of time. Recent graduates working for BEDS will often quickly move to national and global organizations.

Funding: As with other local organizations, BEDS faces the challenge of funding in the nonprofit landscape. Local, national, and global organizations compete for funding in the same bidding processes where global nonprofits are often strongly advantaged.

 

Vision for the Future

 

BEDS provides an impactful model for many communities around the world also experiencing the effects of coastal erosion, rising sea levels, and increased frequency of natural disasters. Through driving social and environmental regeneration in the Sundarbans, BEDS is a global leader of climate change adaptation and mitigation. 

“We have developed model cases and the vision is to replicate this work throughout the coastal region as well as throughout Bangladesh and global locations.” stated Rahman.

 

Maksudur Rahman is the Chief Executive of the Bangladesh Environment and Development Society.

To learn more about BEDS, please visit: https://www.bedsbd.org/

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