India’s women seaweed divers swim against the tide of climate change
来源:World Economic Forum;发表于:2021-04-30;人气指数:605
India’s women seaweed divers swim against
the tide of climate change
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/04/india-women-seaweed-divers-climate-change-effects/
Climate change is making seaweed harvesting
increasingly difficult for divers in India.
Image: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Anuradha
Nagaraj
This article is published in collaboration
with Thomson Reuters Foundation trust.org
23 Apr 2021
Anuradha Nagaraj
Correspondent, Reuters
*Nearly 2,000 women in Tamil Nadu dive to
collect seaweed used in making agar, used as a thickener in food and medicines.
*However, climate change is making the job
increasingly difficult through rising sea levels and stronger currents.
*Research has shown that women who harvest
seaweed have seen their incomes drop by at least 20%.
In a blue plastic barrel, Meenakshi Mookupori
packed her belongings for a five-day stay on an island in the Indian Ocean, off
the Coromandal coast of south India.
Besides her clothes, toothbrush and soap, she
included her diving gear - a worn-out pair of black socks, a locally made pair
of goggles, cheap plastic slippers, cloth gloves, a round metallic plate with
straps - and pain killers.
Mookupori, 56, is one of nearly 2,000 women in
Tamil Nadu state who dive to collect seaweed used in making agar, a gelatinous
substance that becomes a thickener in food and medicines.
"I started accompanying my mother and
grandmother to sea when I was eight or 10," she said, as she helped load
cans of drinking water onto the boat.
"Those days, the seaweed collection was
huge. We would bring back bags full. Now the quantity has reduced. The number
of days we harvest the seaweed has also reduced. The sea has changed and we
also had to."
Rising sea levels, hotter temperatures and
stronger currents along this coast - considered one of the best for commercial
seaweed cultivation - are some of the changes Mookupori is seeing.
Scientists say they are caused by climate
change.
"With the rise in sea temperature and
salinity, seaweed growth has declined in the last decade," said K.
Eswaran, a scientist who heads the field research unit of the Central Salt and
Marine Chemicals Research Institute in Ramanathapuram district.
"Women who harvest seaweed have
definitely been impacted, with their incomes coming down by at least 20%,"
he said.
Down under
Mookupori grew up watching her mother leave
home before dawn, board a boat and go to work harvesting in the Gulf of Mannar.
The shallow bay with a 365-kilometre
(225-miles) coastline is known for its coral reefs and is home to endangered
species such as dugongs, a marine mammal related to the manatee.
In 1986, the region was declared a national
biodiversity park under India's Wildlife Protection Act and collecting natural
resource there was prohibited.
A Tamil Nadu government report noted at the
time that the major environmental threat to the gulf region was quarrying of
coral for production of calcium carbide and lime.
But creation of the marine park meant
restrictions on accessing the bay's 21 uninhabited islands to fish - or to
collect seaweed - for 125 local villages.
"It was like they were declared thieves
in their own backyard," said Venugopal, the programme head for the
non-profit International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) Trust.
"The national park excluded them from
that space, making it challenging for the women to earn a livelihood, instead
of giving them rights to the sea and including them in the conservation
programme."
However, with few other options to earn a
living, the gulf's seaweed collectors have continued to illegally ply their
trade.
Raniamma, 50, one of the harvesters who works
with Mookupori, said she always keeps an eye out for anti-poaching officials
when she and other seaweed harvesters sail to the islands for a harvest. Being
caught there can carry a fine.
"But if we don't camp on the island, we
are unable to collect enough seaweed to sell," she said, rolling up her
sari and slipping into leggings and socks held up by rubber bands.
For each five kilograms of wet seaweed she
collects, Raniamma earns 75 Indian rupees (about $1). Once the seaweed is dried
and cleaned, it is sold by traders for 400 rupees ($5) per five kilos to
domestic industry buyers.
"We only take what we need from the sea,
which is seaweed," Raniamma said.
"The anti-poaching officers don't
understand. We live off the sea and we are also its guardians. What we see down
there is precious and we know it," she said.
Local knowledge
The women of Bharathinagar in Ramanathapuram
district, who have waded into the waters of India's southeast coast for
decades, possess a wealth of knowledge about the gulf waters.
Now 60-year-old Mariamma Masanam, her fingers
gnarled after years of harvests, can see conditions shifting.
"We feel the changes. The waters are
rougher and we have to spend longer hours underwater to fill our bags. We are
also travelling farther from the coast then we did earlier," she told the
Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Ramanathapuram district wildlife warden A.S.
Marimuthu has also seen the changes, and said he was looking for ways to
collaborate with the women.
"They have never been a big problem for
us but we hope they will play a bigger role in managing the marine reserve with
us."
Under a United Nations Development Programme
initiative, for instance, eco-development committees have been set-up in fishing
villages, with women educated on conservation and given training for
alternative careers to reduce their dependence on the sea.
For now, to deal with the changing conditions
and protect their seaweed beds, the women have cut the numbers of days they harvest
and discarded the metal scrapers they once used, now gathering the seaweed with
their hands instead.
To counter charges of over-harvesting, they
ply their trade only about 12 days a month and ensure they rotate between
islands.
None of them harvest between April and June,
the main breeding season for fish.
But their biggest push to protect the
ecosystem and their livelihoods has been to begin cultivating - as well as
harvesting - seaweed.
In additional to wild harvesting, the women
now grow seaweed on bamboo rafts, as part of an effort promoted by the Tamil Nadu
government. But set-up costs are significant and harvests unpredictable, the
women say.
Still, "there are more than 600 women who
have shifted to cultivating seaweed and that has helped the ecosystem
tremendously," said Eswaran.
Growing seaweed also has helped the women get
a harvest in summer months when wild harvesting is harder as higher
temperatures and disease outbreaks cut seaweed growth, he said.
The last generation
Mookupori and Raniamma, however, consider
themselves likely to be the last generation of seaweed harvesters along this
cost.
All of the six women on the boat with
Mookupori are over 50, with deeply tanned skin, greying hair and wrinkled
faces.
The women talk about the harsh conditions of
the sea, the rising tides and the great physical strength required to hold
one's breath and go down to the depths.
But with every passing year, yields are
falling and fines for wild harvesting increasing, they said, making their work
an unattractive job option for their children.
"Our children would never do this,"
Mookupori said.
"In fact, sometimes we take them to the
islands just for a picnic and show them a little of what we do. But when we
stop diving, there will be no one else."