The Green Brigade: Guardians Against the Rising Tide
- Dean Weiss
- 11 minutes ago
- 4 min read
In the watery maze of the Sundarbans, where the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers meet the Bay of Bengal (India), life teeters on the edge. Here, land and sea constantly clash, and tides can engulf fields, homes, or dreams overnight. Amid this fragile environment of mud embankments and mangrove roots, the Green Brigade emerges as a symbol of resilience, a group of women transforming saplings into barriers against the encroaching sea.
The Sundarbans delta spans both India and Bangladesh, with similar women-led mangrove-planting projects taking place on the Bangladesh side, often supported by the United Nations Development Programme and local NGOs. These initiatives include:
The Green Brigade, comprised of Indian women.
Similar groups in Bangladesh engage in these efforts, though they are known by various names (e.g., “Mangrove Women,” “Coastal Green Workers,” etc.).
Who Makes Up The Green Brigade?
The Green Brigade hails from small villages in West Bengal’s Sundarbans delta, one of the most climate-vulnerable regions on Earth. It’s a landscape of shifting islands, tidal rivers, and mangrove forests, home to both the majestic Bengal tiger and some of the poorest communities in India. The women come from villages like Manmathanagar, Gosaba, and Kultali, where most families survive on fishing, crab-collecting, or small farming. Their livelihoods and sometimes their lives depend on the health of the mangroves that line the coasts.
In 2009, Cyclone Aila ravaged the area, flattening homes and washing away whole stretches of land. After that, many women decided they could no longer wait for help to come from outside. They picked up shovels, baskets, and bundles of mangrove saplings, and began rebuilding nature’s wall with their own hands. Thus was born the Green Brigade, a community movement led by women determined to fight back against the sea.
What is the mission of the Green Brigade?
Their mission is simple yet profound: to protect their villages by restoring the mangrove forests that have been destroyed by storms, saltwater intrusion, and human activity. Mangroves are nature’s best coastal defense, their tangled roots hold the soil in place, reduce erosion, and absorb the energy of incoming waves. For the women of the Green Brigade, planting mangroves represents more than just protection; it is an expression of dignity and empowerment. Many of them lost everything to repeated cyclones. Planting trees gives them not only income, through nursery work and eco-programs, but also a voice in community decision-making. They have learned to read tide charts, select resilient species, and organise large-scale planting drives. As one woman put it:
“When we plant a tree, we plant hope. Every root we place in the mud holds our land — and our lives — together.”
Their goals have expanded over time. Beyond rebuilding mangroves, they now raise awareness about plastic pollution, help train other women in eco-livelihoods, and educate children about conservation. What began as a handful of determined villagers has become a movement spreading across dozens of islands.
How Many Trees Have They Planted?
Exact counts vary by year and project, but local organisations working with the Green Brigade estimate they have planted over two million mangrove saplings since 2010, covering nearly 5,500 hectares of degraded shoreline. Each monsoon season, teams of women wade knee-deep into the mud, carrying baskets of young saplings they’ve grown in their community nurseries. The work is back-breaking: heat, mosquitoes, tides that turn treacherous in minutes. Yet they press on, often singing folk songs as they plant. Their rhythm of work follows the rhythm of the tide, a harmony between women and water, labour and life.
Have Their Efforts Been Beneficial?
The results speak louder than any words. In several villages, the newly planted mangrove belts have reduced the impact of storm surges, slowed coastal erosion, and even restored fish and crab populations. During recent cyclones like Amphan and Yaas, villages protected by mangrove buffers suffered far less damage than those without.
Satellite images show that areas managed by the Green Brigade have seen mangrove cover increase by nearly 25%, while neighbouring bare zones continue to shrink. For these women, that’s the difference between despair and survival. Their work has also drawn national attention. Environmental groups and NGOs now support them with training and resources, while scientists use their plantations as living examples of community-driven climate resilience. In 2023, several members were honoured by local authorities for their contribution to “green defense.” But the women remain humble:
“We didn’t do it for awards,” one said. “We did it so our children won’t have to run when the next cyclone comes.”
A Legacy of Green Strength
The story of the Green Brigade is not one of victims, but of victors. Against the backdrop of rising seas and economic hardship, they’ve shown what grassroots action can achieve. They have turned the muddy shores of the Sundarbans into classrooms of courage, teaching the world that environmental change begins with ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
As the tide creeps higher each year, the Green Brigade’s saplings grow taller, their roots binding the earth together like threads of hope. For every tree they plant, they reclaim a little more of their land, and a great deal more of their future.
Because in the end, the Green Brigade is not just planting mangroves. They are planting resilience, renewal, and the promise that life, like the tide, will always find its way back.
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