Ecological collapse in the world’s largest mangrove forest is a preview of what’s to come

The first thing that struck us wasn’t the missing trees, but the missing water. In May 2026, we visited the Sundarbans, a mangrove forest in the delta where the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers meet in the Bay of Bengal. We went there expecting a story about the mangroves, the tangled, salt-tolerant forests that are supposed to be the last line of defence against cyclones and rising seas. What we found instead was a dry pond, cracked and empty, in a delta where water was never supposed to…