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'Everyday disasters' driving flight from Sundarbans

By Aditya Ghosh SAGAR ISLAND, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The end for Shibshankar Pal's hopes of clinging to his home in India's Sundarban islands came the night of July 14, 2014, when surging seas advanced on the house he had just reconstructed following floods a year earlier. A tidal surge of as much as 21 feet – double a normal surge - ripped through the island village and soon swept away his home in Kusumtala village, Namkhana. Worsening flooding and storm surges linked to climate change are driving a growing exodus from the low-lying islands facing the Bay of Bengal. The islands, along with mainland parts of the Sundarbans, are part of a 4,000-square-kilometre UNESCO World Heritage Site, the world’s largest mangrove ecosystem and a critical tiger habitat.