Editorial
Environment merits priority attention
Hazards are growing for Bangladesh
It can hardly be overstated that but for the hue and cry raised by civil society leaders and Paribesh An-dolon activists over encroachment on our rivers, lakes and parks we would hardly have been aware of the environmental hazards involved. The expropriation of public lands including forest resources by professional land grabbers and poachers managing impunity to legal action during successive governments left the nation poorer on many counts. Huge acreage of land went into wrongful possession diminishing space for development projects as tree cover dwindled and the natural drainage channels got clogged.
On another level, water logging in the cities resulting in cesspools, piling garbage only fractionally disposed of, and the dilapidated transports spewing carbon monoxide have exacerbated the levels of surface and air pollution to the degradation of the overall environment around us.
While reclamation of land in illegal possession is very much an administrative-cum-legal issue that needs a separate strategy to be addressed, in the immediate term, what we can do is to re-equip the Department of Environment with necessary gadgets, manpower, and above all, legal teeth to perform its multifarious tasks effectively.
When we are wrestling with such routine environmental concerns, an overarching challenge stares us in the face. Already Bangladesh has been exposed to climate change which bore down on us through two successive floods and cyclone Sidr to top these off. The intensity of the calamities proving catastrophic gave a foretaste of things to come with global warming eventually raising the sea level to drown nearly one-third of Bangladesh. It is necessary to get our act together to face up to the challenge through galvanisation of national resources with the media playing its due role. We also need to be part of regional and international strategies to prepare ourselves adequately to tide over the horrific environmental crisis on the horizon.
It is in this backdrop we are heartened to learn that Dr Atiq Rahman has won the Champions of the Earth Award 2008 from the United Nations Environment Programme in Nirobi. At the helm of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS), 'he transformed the NGO into a leading think-tank in South Asia on sustainable development issues.' We congratulate him on his success.
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