Bangladesh

In a report, the environmental activist Philip Gain describes how oil giant Unocal is setting a gas pipeline through the Lawachhara National Park, posing a major threat on that unique patch of forest. What follows are excerpts of Gain’s report: Lawachhara National Park, a 1250 hectare forest patch, is part of the West Bhanugachh Reserved Forest in the Maulvi Bazar district. The state of the public forestlands outside the Sundarbans in the southwest of the country is appalling.

The Mro (also Mru) are one of the indigenous peoples inhabiting since long Chittagong Hills. They are totally dependent on the forest, where they not only hunt but also engage in local varieties cultivation, collective farming and gardening.

A project earmarked for the biodiversity rich Sundarbans is being firmly opposed by environmentalists and local population, who fear that it will harm the world’s biggest mangrove forests. The Lucknow-based Sahara group, in partnership with the state, is setting up an enormous and controversial ‘eco-tourism’ project in the Sundarbans, which experts warn would do the ecologically fragile region more harm than good.

The Sundarban, covering some 10,000 square kilometres of land and water, is the largest contiguous block of coastal mangrove forests in the world and is part of the world’s largest delta formed from sediments deposited by the three great rivers —the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna— which converge on the Bengal Basin. The UNESCO had declared a portion of the Bangladesh Sundarban as World Heritage site in 1997, and the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) has funded projects to save it from degradation.

I was part of a filming crew of seven members who were on June 4 in the Modhupur forest in order to make a documentary film on the forest destruction with special attention to the effects of plantations —mostly commercial and industrial— on public forestland. The Modhupur forest is now thoroughly plundered. We were in our third and final round of filming in Modhupur, and we focused our last shots on a suddenly discovered spot where green vegetation was being thoroughly cut. The spot is very near to Lohoria Beat between Rasulpur and Dokhola Ranges.

The role of indigenous peoples and traditional knowledge systems in the conservation of biodiversity is so well known as a general fact that it needs no further assertion. The particular role of women however is less acknowledged and even where such acknowledgement is offered, is not accompanied by the concomitant offer of space on related platforms of discussion and decision making particularly by mainstream processes. North -Eastern India is a region with rich forests and wetlands, inhabited by over 250 indigenous peoples.

Plantation of exotics --rubber, acacia and eucalyptus in particular-- is one major factor that has changed the Modhupur sal forest (Shorea robusta) for ever, with severe consequences for the ethnic communities --Garos and Koch-- who have lived in the forest for centuries. With loan money from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank in particular, the government has actually established plantations of alien species all over the public forestland. Except for the Sundarban, only fragments of native forests remain in Bangladesh.

The Bangladeshi organisation BanglaPraxis, together with other local groups, have reacted against a reported move from Shell Bangladesh to conduct an aerial and seismic survey in the Sundarbans mangrove forest from September 27.

The SBCP Watch Group is an environmental group of four local NGOs --Actionaid Bangladesh, Rupantar, JJS and Lokaj-- established in 2000 with the purpose of monitoring the activities carried out by the so-called Sunderban Biodiversity Conservation Project (SBCP). This 77.5 million dollar project is funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Nordic Development Fund (see WRM Bulletin 44), allegedly to restore the original ecosystem of the largest single block of mangroves that exists in the world today (see WRM Bulletin 44).

On Nov. 7, 1990, Koronamoyee Sardar was killed by an armed gang of hired thugs whose aim was to set up a shrimp farm at Horinkhola Polder 22. The local villagers, led by Koronamoyee, resisted this invasive force. On that fateful day, Koronamoyee became a martyr for her cause, and in the eyes of her people she remains their heroine in their decade long ongoing struggle against the surrounding oppressor.

Bangladesh is one of the states signatories of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Nevertheless, the three types of forests existing in the country --the evergreen and semi-evergreen rainforests in the eastern region and at the Chittagong Hill Tracts region, the moist and dry deciduous forests, known as “sal” forests, situated in the central plains and the northeast region, and the tidal mangrove forests along the coast-- are under threat, and little is being done to save them. In the meantime, annual deforestation rate has reached 3.3%.

The Sundarbans are the largest mangroves in the world and have been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, as well as included as a Ramsar site. This area, that extends at the border between India and Bangladesh, is menaced by the exploration activites of oil and gas companies, which has provoked the reaction of local and international environmental NGOs (see WRM Bulletins 15 and 23).