Rising salinity is erasing medicinal plants from Bangladesh’s Sundarbans

Saltwater intrusion is making medicinal plants increasingly difficult to find in Bangladesh’s Sundarbans, according to new field reporting from communities beside the world’s largest mangrove forest. Traditional healers who once gathered leaves, bark and roots close to their villages now spend longer searching and report that several useful species have retreated from familiar areas.

A living pharmacy under pressure

The Sundarbans supports a long tradition of plant-based treatment in communities where formal healthcare can be distant or expensive. Al Jazeera followed healer Suranjan Raptan as he searched the forest and documented local concern over the declining availability of plants used for digestive problems, coughs, skin conditions and other common ailments.

This is not only a cultural loss. Medicinal plants form part of the forest economy alongside fishing, honey collection and gathering other non-timber products. When useful species become scarce, residents lose both low-cost remedies and potential income, while specialist knowledge becomes harder to pass to younger generations through regular practice.

Why the forest is changing

Rising seas, stronger tidal penetration and reduced freshwater flows can increase salinity in soils and waterways. Those conditions favour salt-tolerant vegetation while placing freshwater-associated species under stress. FAO-backed research records a contraction of herb diversity along salinity gradients in coastal Bangladesh and identifies the Sundarbans as a source of medicinal and other non-wood forest products.

The pressure is part of a wider climate-resilience challenge. FAO’s Bangladesh programme describes climate resilience and protection of vulnerable rural livelihoods as national priorities. Its coastal projects emphasise water management, stress-tolerant production, ecosystem-based measures and support for communities exposed to environmental shocks.

What to watch

Researchers and forest managers will need better inventories showing which medicinal species are disappearing, where they are relocating and how quickly salinity is changing. Practical responses could include freshwater restoration, community nurseries, controlled cultivation outside vulnerable forest zones and protection against overharvesting. Without those measures, ecological change may remove valuable plants before their medical uses and genetic diversity are fully documented.