The ranking of Bangladesh on lists prepared by international organisations on different issues and situation from time to time varies. It was placed at the bottom of the corruption perception index (CPI), prepared by the Transparency International (TI), for being the most corrupt nation in four to five successive years in the late 1990s and early 2000. Except for certain areas of the global human development index its scorecard has never been that impressive. In most cases, its ranking has been at the bottom end of the lists of all types.
Bangladesh, however, has secured the top position in a recent report prepared by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The FAO report, titled, State of the World Forest-2016, places Bangladesh at the top of the list of 17 countries where both agricultural and forest lands dwindled continuously during the last two and a half decades.
The size of forestlands of the country, according to the latest FAO report, had been reduced by 25,000 hectares between 1990 and 2015. However, such shrinking is nothing unusual as a number of countries across the world have been experiencing such a negative development. But in most countries forestlands are usually got converted into farmland. But that has not been the case with Bangladesh. The forestlands here are being used for accommodating houses, physical infrastructures and other facilities. The farmlands are also not immune to such conversion. According to an estimate about 1.0 per cent of the agricultural land is lost annually to certain needs of the population.
According to the FAO report, 1.145 million hectares of farmland disappeared between 1990 and 2010 in Bangladesh. If the current trend persists, no land would be available for farming at the end of next 50 years, experts predict.
The field-level agricultural experts are not contesting the claim about the loss of the country's arable land. But the claim about the loss of forestland made in the latest FAO report has been contested by none other than the Department of Forests which is rather making a claim of opposite nature. The department says the area under forests in the country has increased by 4.0 per cent to 17 per cent during the period under FAO review. The national forest policy-2016 aims at raising the coverage to 20 per cent by 2035, they said.
Scepticism about available official data is widespread. Most people take such data with a grain of salt. Besides, there is something called the real-life experience of the people who have been witnessing an unabated plundering of government reserve forests and felling of trees indiscriminately at other places.
The destruction of a sizeable part of homestead forests has been going on for decades to accommodate the needs of an ever-expanding population. It is hard to stop such sporadic yet continuous destruction of forests since shelter is a basic need of the people. They also need roads, educational institutions, industries, markets and other infrastructures. So the process of deforestation continues unabated.
Some sceptics do at times question the viability of Bangladesh given the dwindling land-man ratio. Such doubt cannot be dismissed outright if one takes into consideration the future problems in right perspective. It is almost certain--- there could be some delay, but it is inevitable--- that some part of the coastal districts would gradually be engulfed by the rising sea. Arable land, forests, human habitation etc would go under water. The possible loss of farmland and forests for reasons of climate change is not always taken into account. But the fact remains that the loss due to environmental reasons is likely to be faster and more serious in nature.
There will be no way of recouping the loss of both arable land and forests in the event of such an environmental disaster. For people thrown out of their homes by the rising sea would throng the areas not affected by the environmental calamity. More and more farmland and forests would be lost then to accommodate the 'environmental refugees' in their own country.
Many would consider all the possibilities mentioned above as products of a pessimistic mind. But should they? No matter what the leaders of the developed and some developing countries that are largely responsible for the problem of global warming say, little is being done to repair the damage. Some island countries are already having problems. A few others are now bracing for the worse. The coastal districts in Bangladesh are now experiencing flooding by sea water during the high tide, which was not the case five to ten years back. Besides, the problem of erosion in the coastal belt has become severe in recent years.
So, for now the Forest Department would better serve the country if it concentrates more on creating forests in the coastal areas and newly accrued chars there. However, the fear of these forests being washed away in the future is there.
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