Sundarbans Mangrove Restoration

In partnership with Earthbanc

The Sundarbans mangrove restoration project in West Bengal, India provides habitat protection for the endangered Royal Bengal Tiger. Mangroves sequester carbon at 5-fold the rate of terrestrial trees, they provide habitat to support rich biodiversity, including the endangered Royal Bengal Tiger, they pump oxygen into our atmosphere, and they protect coastlines and coastal communities from storm surges and other extreme weather events.
Mangroves are a special type of forest that occur at the conjunction of land, sea, and river. Mangroves provide so many ecosystem services to coastal communities and beyond; fisheries, fuel and timber, medicinal products, coastal protection, and numerous cultural and spiritual services. If not saved via our project, those coastal communities whose lives are dependent on these resources would indulge in illegal activities, like lodging wood, illegal poaching of tigers, etc. This could also lead to the extinction of the already endangered Bengal Tiger over the next ten years. Also, 50% of the world's fish spawn in mangrove ecosystems, so we would have a lot fewer fish left on the planet.
Losses of mangroves also release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, arising from the destruction of their biomass and the release of the large carbon stocks held in their soils. This affects all of us on the planet as it contributes to global warming, further accelerating global climatic change.

Almost 1.3 million people are dependent on forests for their livelihoods in the region of Sunderbans (Census, 2001), and according to the same study, there are almost 200,000 woodcutters and firewood collectors in the region. Also currently, there is a huge rate of deforestation in the Sundarbans area, which we are working on reducing. We aim towards planting and conserving 40 million mangrove plants in the next 5 to 7 years. This could create livelihood opportunities for up to 20,000 people in the same time period, especially if vocational training is provided to them. Earthbanc has joined forces with local Microfinance Organizations to restore 10 million mangrove trees in India now. The Sundarbans is the largest store of terrestrial blue carbon on the planet and prevents local flooding by protecting homes and infrastructure from hurricane-driven storm surges.

So far, 785,000 mangroves and erosion control trees have been planted by 23,000 active daily users on Earthbanc India now sequestering 800,000 tonnes of carbon, with the issuance of 800,000 carbon credits, verified by Earthbanc. This is being done by our Earth Plus Verification that builds upon the metrics of the Fair Forest Report, provided by Open Forests UG0F1. Earthbanc’s Forest Monitoring and Carbon Verification Protocol, data sources include: satellite Sentinel 2, Landsat 5, and Landsat 7 of the Copernicus Program by European Space Agency; data provided by NASA, USGS, Hansen; and UMD extracted using Google Earth Engine Explorer and NASA Earth data. Results are compared with ground truth data of partnering entities.