The environment is rendered as the key to the existence of life on the earth and enormously affects human beings and all other species. It provides natural services to human beings and all other species. Environment particularly serves human beings with oxygen, food, water, fuel, medicines, building materials and many other things. Certainly, it has both positive and negative impacts. It positively contributes to the growth and development of human beings and various other species, provides opportunities for income, contributes to good physical and mental health and brings many other positive impacts. But it negatively affects the growth of humans and other species, contributes to the ill health of individuals and the population with toxic air pollutants and polluted waters, leads to negative economic impacts with loss of earning opportunities and increased costs of mitigation efforts, etc. Undoubtedly, negative impacts on human beings and others are more when the environment is degraded.
Before focusing on some environmental problems in Bangladesh, it seems reasonable to say something about the environment. The term ‘environment’ is derived from a French word ‘Environia’ which means to surround. It is the sum total of conditions that surrounds an organism at a given point in time and space. The environment is usually rendered as micro and macro; micro environment indicates the immediate local surrounding, whereas macro environment indicates all external surroundings. The environment is also rendered as biotic and abiotic; while the biotic environment refers to all living factors or forms including plants, animals and micro-organisms. etc., abiotic environment refers to all non-living factors or conditions including air, water, sunlight, soil and minerals. Both biotic and abiotic components are very essential for human beings for meeting economic and other needs.
Environmental degradation – or the reduction of the capacity of the environment to meet social and ecological objectives and needs – is of particular concern across the world. Environmental degradation, which is considered by the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change of the United Nations to be one of the ten threats in the world, occurs through a variety of means – depletion of resources (air, water, soil, etc.), destruction of ecosystems and habitats, extinction of wildlife and pollution, etc. Reasons for environmental degradation may broadly be natural, which occurs due to natural forces or causes and man-made which occurs due to activities of human beings. Unplanned urbanization, indiscriminate industrialization, increased and unplanned human habitats, wars, etc. -made degradation of the environment more prominent in the contemporary world.
Like many other countries, however, the environment is changing in Bangladesh with considerable degradation. Due to fewer resources or poverty, over-population and lack of awareness on the subject, pressure on the environment and negative impacts of environmental degradation are undeniably more in this country. According to the 2018 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which is indicative of the environmental performance of states on a number of fronts especially cleaning up air quality, protecting biodiversity, and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, the rank of Bangladesh is 179th out of 180 countries. As expected, something more needs to be done for protecting the environment from degradation and securing environmental sustainability – which allows human society to satisfy its present needs without exceeding the capacity of the environment to continue to provide services necessary to meet the needs of future generations.
Here, I will focus on some major problems of the biotic and abiotic environment and provide a few suggestions for improvements to the present environmental situation of Bangladesh.
Climate change, caused by global warming, is one of the most important environmental problems in the world. Global warming is because by increased earth’s temperature and increased temperature is due to the emissions of greenhouse gases – particularly carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. It is predicted that the global surface temperature is likely to rise a further 0.3 to 1.7° C in the lowest emissions scenario and 2.6 to 4.8 ° C in the highest emissions scenario. Global warming leads to sea-level rise, which in turn can be devastating, especially in coastal regions and low lying areas including Bangladesh. As one of the largest deltas in the world, Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to floods, cyclones and storm surge, salinity intrusion, droughts, etc. to climate change and its geographical location. Such events have already increased in Bangladesh. Moreover, sea level rise is expected to submerge vast low-lying coastal areas and displace thousands of people in the country.
Pollution, particularly air and water pollution, is another major environmental concern. With some seasonal variations, the air quality in Bangladesh has been declining over the years at an alarming rate. According to the EPI 2018, the rank of Bangladesh on air quality is 179th out of 180 countries. Dhaka – one of the topmost polluted cities in the world now – and some other cities including Gazipur, Khulna, Rajshahi, Sylhet and Barisal have higher air pollution, which occurs due to increased presence of different air pollutants like carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide particularly though smoke from brick kilns and motorized or mechanized vehicles, dust from roads and construction sites, toxic fume from industrial sites, etc. Surely, air pollution has already affected health – respiratory tract diseases, irritation, headache, asthma, high blood pressure, heart ailments, etc.
Water pollution, which is a natural or induced reduction of the quality of water, is another serious environmental concern in Bangladesh. It may be surface water – including rivers and lakes – and groundwater pollution. Surface water pollution occurs due to chemical pollutants, sewage water, household sewage, fertilizer, insecticide, pesticide, oil spills, etc. Water pollution worsens in Bangladesh because household sewage, industrial chemicals, etc. are discharged into water bodies including rivers without treatment to get rid of harmful compounds. Groundwater pollution, especially arsenic contamination, has affected 59 of the 64 districts in Bangladesh although situations of arsenic and its impacts have reduced recently. Certainly, water pollution has already brought enormous negative impacts on the eco-system, human health, animals (including fishes and other aquatic organisms), etc.
Deforestation – the destruction of vast areas of forest – is another major environmental threat to Bangladesh. According to the ecologists, there should be forests on the 25 percent land of the total area for any livable environment. In Bangladesh, however, there is 16 percent forest of the total land; moreover, around 50% of forests of the country have been destroyed in the last 20 years. In Bangladesh, deforestation occurs mainly due to a lack of effective conservation efforts, indiscriminate cutting of forest trees in large numbers for firewood and various wood products, zoom cultivation, cutting down of trees for urbanization and industrialization, etc. Destruction of natural forests, which are habitats to wildlife and heavens of many rare plans, is responsible for disturbing ecological balance or degrading biodiversity, putting millions of plants and animal species at risk of extinction, increasing desertification, etc.
The degradation of bio-diversity is another major environmental concern in Bangladesh. Indeed, the country is naturally endowed with superb bio-diversity – variation in genetic, species and ecosystem. However, various reasons including chemical fertilizers, water pollution, indiscriminate dredging, deforestation and filling of wetlands are depleting bio-diversity in this country. Declining biodiversity, in turn, is causing various other problems including the loss of a vast variety of flora and fauna. Indeed, around 20 species of wildlife are extinct in the country. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed a total of 40 species of inland mammals, 41 species of birds, 58 species of reptiles and 8 species of amphibians under various degrees of risk in the country; moreover, it has been assumed that around 10 percent flora of the country is already extinct.
Erosion of soil is another vital environmental concern. It occurs for a variety of reasons, particularly riverbank erosion, landslides in hilly areas, hill cutting, etc. Though river erosion happens in almost all the areas during floods, it is most noticeable on the banks of the Padma and the Jamuna, especially for the lack of protective dams. Hill cutting and landslides, which have considerably increased in recent years in the country, are because of several reasons including Illegal settlement, land grabbing for housing projects, zoom farming, industrialization, and construction of development projects including hydroelectric dams, roads and highways and heavy rainfall. Surely, soil erosion is causing deaths of many, loss of vast arable lands, engulfing houses, destroying food production, bringing misery to thousands of people living along the banks of the rivers and hillsides, etc.
Urban waste – commercial wastes, industrial wastes, household wastes, hazardous wastes (such as paint, batteries and cleaning solvent), etc. – is a vital environmental concern, especially in urban areas of Bangladesh. With increased urban population growth, waste generation is increasing day by day. Currently, the country is generating more than 22000 tons of waste each day in its urban areas including Dhaka and Chittagong. But municipal waste management system is poor. Because of indiscriminate dumping of solid wastes, the indiscriminate placing of dustbins on roads, lack of sanitary landfill facilities and lack of medical waste recycling plants, wastes in urban areas are causing serious environmental hazards and health problems (i.e., increased incidence and prevalence of diseases including malaria and respiratory problems), contaminating groundwater, blocking drainage system, etc.
In Bangladesh, there are some other major environmental concerns including natural hazards (cyclone, earthquake, flood, drought, etc.), destruction of wetlands, creeping salinity intrusion, soil pollution, sound pollution, etc. Destruction of wetlands is to be particularly mentioned here. Indeed, wetlands – which are consisted of vast areas of natural lakes, freshwater marshes (or haors), oxbow lakes (or baors), freshwater depressions (or beels), fish ponds, estuaries, etc. – are very important for economic, bio-diversity and other reasons. However, unfortunately, wetlands of the country are being destroyed for various reasons including illegal grabbing by influential persons, indiscriminate expansions of roads and highways, indiscriminate expansions of human habitats, construction of business establishments, etc.
Without any doubt, all the above mentioned concerns need to be adequately addressed for protecting both biotic and abiotic environments from degradation and securing environmental sustainability in Bangladesh. In this regard, legal and policy measures are very important. Surely, there are various laudable legal and policy measures – the Environment Conservation Rules 1997, Bangladesh Environment Court Act 2000, the National Environment Management Action Plan 1995, the National Environment Policy 1992 and the National Conservation Strategy (2016-2031) – in Bangladesh. Environmental laws and policy, however, are criticized on several grounds – inadequate provision for enforcement of laws, jurisdictional conflicts in some legal provisions and inadequate emphasis on prevention of environmental degradation – which need to be taken into consideration.
The major concern, undoubtedly, is that existing legal and policy measures are not adequately implemented. Inadequate implementation of environmental rules and regulations has aggravated the environmental problems. In the implementation, there are some considerable barriers – lack of political will and commitment, inadequate institutional arrangements or lack of institutional capacity to ensure proper enforcement, lack of skilled human resources, lengthy process of dealing with environmental legal aspects, lack of inter-sectoral coordination, inadequate local level institutions, lack of prioritization of responses to environmental degradation, etc. Political commitment is very important as grabbing of wetlands, cutting of hills, etc. are being done by influential individuals having strong connections with politically powerful individuals.
The institutional mechanism in the public sector is to be especially emphasized in this regard. A strong, responsible and accountable institutional mechanism is needed for environmental risk reduction, mitigation of impacts of environmental degradation and taking immediate and urgent actions. However, the institutional mechanism is not adequately strong to deal with various environmental challenges. Surely, government departments considerably demonstrate a lack of preparedness, effective coordination and failure to take needed steps. In this regard, effective coordination among different relevant ministries and departments and local level government institutions can improve situations further. The local government bodies such as Union Parishad, Upazila, City Corporation and Municipalities can be more utilized for pollution control, conservation of the environment, disaster management, strengthening adaptation mechanisms and mitigation of environmental risks.
Along with government institutions, increased emphasis should be given to environmental governance involving private organizations, civil society (environmentalist groups, research organizations and media) and people. Private organizations need to be more responsible and play due roles with compliance to corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER). Certainly, civil society organizations particularly environmentalist groups and media are playing very important roles; however, these need to be more engaged in raising concerns related to environmental degradation and generating an appropriate response from relevant government agencies. Additionally, awareness at individual, family and community levels can improve governance, help to conserve the environment and make people less destructive to the environment. Therefore, awareness among people on various environmental aspects needs to be created with environmental education programs.
Certainly, all environmental problems are not created by man-made activities within the country. Environmental problems, particularly climate change, are largely created by developed countries. But global efforts including the Montreal protocol in 1987, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, the Kyoto protocol in 1997 and the Paris agreement in 2015 are considerable in this regard. Since Bangladesh has emerged as one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, it is essential for the country to be more active with a more effective diplomatic mechanism with international organizations – including the international panel on climate change and the United Nations environmental program – and developed states for securing adequate financial and technical supports for mitigating impacts of climate change. At the same time, adequate utilization of international support including funds must be ensured.
NB: This article was earlier published in the Daily Observer on March 31, 2019.
