Development damaging Nature, defying law

Already ranked ninth globally for climate disaster risk, according to the World Risk Index 2023, Bangladesh, so far, seems to have resigned itself to its fate. Worse, it has been doing everything to make matters worse often in the name of development work. So, one is not surprised when, according a recent report, the Roads and Highways Department (RHD) flattened some nine hills in Chattogram's Ramgarh-Sitakunda reserved forest area. Why did RHD cleared a section of reserved forest area without taking necessary permission from the authority concerned, the Department of Environment (DoE), to be specific? But who is going to answer this question? In fact, after witnessing rapacious decimation of hills and forestlands over the years in Chattogram and elsewhere in the country, asking such question seems pointless.
Actually, cutting of hills in Chattogram started from 1860s with the British East India Company conquering this part of the world after defeating the provincial governor of Bengal of Mughal India. Initially, some hills were levelled to house offices and residential quarters of the Company officials. During the colonial period and later, some hills were cut for the expansion of the port town. Since the issue of environmental degradation was yet to become a matter of serious concern in the 1950s during the pre-Independence period, some hills like the Parir Pahar (Fairy Hill) was cut down to build the New Market and the State Bank. But within 30 to 35 years since Independence, over 100 hills including Khulshi, Sholoshahar, Chashma hill, Hill View, Raufabad and so on of Chattogram have just vanished from the areas. Other than carrying out development work, hill cutting has its other economic reasons.
It starts after a government-owned hilly area is leased out to private parties including realtors. They then start to clear, burn and cut the hills. After a hill is levelled, the value of the land recovered is increased manifold. The earth of the hill is then bought by those who have lowlands to fill and brick fields to make brick. Interestingly, the Bangladesh Survey record misclassifies hills as farmlands (nal land), shankhola (land with grasslike plants), khila (fallow land) or bari (homestead land) and so on. Taking advantage of this wrong classification under Bangladesh Survey which started, according to the Land Ministry website in 1970, private developers have often been taking lease of hills from the government as flat, lowland or areas covered by shrubs as shown in the government record, and carrying out their work of hill-cutting. According to a recently published report, some 150 hills and hillocks across Chattogram city and its neighbouring upazilas of Hathazari and Sitakunda covering an area of about 1,400 acres have been wrongly classified in the Bangladesh Survey (BS) record. On the contrary, the 2010 amendment to the Environmental Conservation Act of Bangladesh defines 'hill' or 'hillock' as naturally elevated landforms and prohibits cutting of hills except after getting clearance from the Department of Environment (DoE). But given the history of lax implementation of laws and misclassifications in government land record of hills as low, bushy or flatlands, who is going to stop land grabbers from flattening hills with official permission? When it comes to a government department itself, in this case, the RHD, doing development work by way of expansion of road, then the helplessness of the DoE is not hard to understand. So, the destruction of the hills began in 2023 and meanwhile, as reported, removal of more than one million cubic feet of soil has been completed. True, the project authority received approval for the Terms of Reference (ToR) to prepare the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report, but not permission to cut down the trees of the reserved forestland and the hills. But who cares?
The development work, after all, cannot wait. According to the Forest Department, around 4,600 mature trees would be required to be felled from the Ramgarh-Sitakunda Reserve Forest for the project. For expansion of road, RHD has taken some 90 acres of forestland. Going by the RHD project, a 38-kilometre road from Baraiyarhat to Ramgarh is being widened to 38 feet (which is now 18 feet wide). There is reportedly a rush to complete the road expansion project by December this year. The aim, as could be further learnt, is to facilitate transport of goods to India through the newly inaugurated Khagrachhari land port.
Now the question is: what makes construction of the RHD project so urgent that a large area of the Ramgarh-Sitakunda reserve forest has to be mercilessly decimated and that, too, in clear violation of law? All the while, the Chattogram DoE would be watching flattening of the hills, elimination of the forest and destruction of habitats of a large number of plant and animal species including mammalians, reptiles, birds, you name it, in utter helplessness? The adviser to the ministry of environment, forest and climate change needs to act to stop this mindless destruction of the Ramgarh-Sitakunda reserve forest in the name of expansion of a road. If road has to be expanded at all, it should avoid a reserve forest on a hilly land to do that. It is also necessary to review, if, in the present circumstances, the RHD's road expansion project is so overriding that it has to be done even by riding roughshod over environmental considerations and law?
Here it is a government body decimating a reserve forest in the name of road development and there is the private sector bodies levelling hills for housing projects as those are shown in the government land record as flat or low lands! But in either case law of the land is being violated by design or mistake. If someone affected by such damage to nature goes to court for remedy, the accused using the loopholes of laws, especially the ones relating to environment protection files a writ petition to get a stay order prom the court. The depredations of the hills, forests, wetlands and all other protected and protectable segments of our natural heritage continue unabated. Development work in a hilly terrain can still be done with the application of sustainable planning and design without disturbing hill ecosystems. In such cases, small scale development work using low-impact technology that keeps natural topography in due consideration is employed. Modern information technology tools like Geographical Information System (GIS)-based spatial planning can help undertake small-scale projects sustainably avoiding ecologically sensitive areas. The best way to initiate and run such projects in environmentally-sensitive areas is through involvement of local communities. In that case, the government should set examples by initiating such development projects with experiences and knowhow brought from abroad where there are examples of success.

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