It is easy to consider the south of West Bengal as an unwieldy side of the world that is acutely stricken by the climate crisis. But in fact, the effects of climate change are so unsparing of smaller details that two places not far from each other on the Bengal coast are confronted with two different aspects of it. Two villages where women are integral parts of the local water ecosystem – one ensconced in the dense tidal river web of the Sundarban of South 24 Parganas district and the other near the mouth of the Hooghly in East Medinipur district – offer a picture of the disparate realities of an area as minuscule as the Bengal coast.This story was produced with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.