The process to submit a primary impact assessment study report to the government for determining environmental and ecological impacts of Rohingya influx in the country is underway.
The Ministry of Forest and Environment has recently informed the parliamentary standing committee on forest and environment ministry about it.
The committee, however, suggested that the main task of the ministry should be to assess the loss caused to the forest and inform the government about it.
Then the ministry should work jointly with various organizations who work both locally and internationally on forest to realise compensation for the damages caused to the environment and ecology in Cox's Bazar.
In a report submitted at the 39th meeting of the committee last week, it was informed that the Rapid Environmental Impact Assessment (REIA) report titled 'Environmental Impact of Rohingya Influx' will be prepared jointly by the ministry, UNDP and UN Women. UNDP has also pledged to carry out the detailed assessment.
The ministry prepared the report as per the suggestions made by the committee at the 38th meeting.
In the report, the ministry said the loss caused to natural and social forest is worth about Tk 3.96 billion until December 2017. But the extent of overall damage to biodiversity will be hundred of thousand billion taka.
As many as 0.62 million Rohingya refugees have been living in an area of 4,836 acres of land under Taknaf and Ukhia upazilas of South Forest Department in Cox's Bazar. Primarily, the district administration decided to set up camps on 3,000 acres of land, but the decision was not implemented.
The authority has built 50,000 temporary shelters, installed 8,000 tube-wells, 35,500 sanitary latrines, 17-kilometre power line with 117 pillars, 33-kilometre road, and 34 godowns to preserve food for the Rohingyas in forest areas. The Rohingyas have been using trillion cubic metres of firewood by felling trees.
When asked, migration expert Asif Munier told the FE that the proposal to realise compensation is a very good one. Bangladesh should appeal to the international court on environment and global climate fund.
"The damage was caused due to unorganised settlement of Rohingyas in forest areas of Teknaf and Ukhia. The authority could have prevented the damage by stopping Rohingya settlement there in an undisciplined manner when the number of refugees was small," he said.
Bangladesh should approach both regionally and internationally so that some other major Muslim countries like Indonesia and Malaysia share the responsibility of the Rohingyas to avert this kind of social and natural problems, he added.
But the country has adopted a soft approach and is not conducting effective negotiations and lobbying with other countries for solution to the long-standing problem, Mr Munier observed.
"Since the repatriation process is much critical and lengthy one, Bangladesh must pressurize Indonesia and Malaysia to take half of these refugees and rehabilitate them temporarily to some of their places as those are much bigger countries than Bangladesh," he said.
Architect and environment activist Iqbal Habib said the surface of the soil could have been protected if the camp setting process was done in an organised way.
Bangladesh authorities never think of the crisis moment thus getting prepared to tackle it, he added.
"If we could have done an eco-friendly camping in a more orchestrated way, the loss to the forest could have been minimised. But the authorities were careless leading to an anarchy in that area which may bring a catastrophe later as mudslide is a regular phenomena there," said Mr Habib.
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