Lack of effective coordination among the agencies concerned, poor technical capacity and inadequate skilled manpower still remain the key challenges for ensuring environment-friendly economic growth in the country.
As a result, despite significant economic growth, the country has to incur huge loss every year on account of environmental hazards, experts opined at a programme in the capital on Sunday.
Keeping this in view, they recommended integrating environment-conservation approach in all development activities, strengthening coordination among the agencies, and creating more investment opportunities in environment-friendly businesses.
These opinions came at an annual dissemination event, jointly organised by the programmes titled Economic Dialogue on Green Growth (EDGG) and Economic Dialogue on Inclusive Growth (EDIG), under Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom (UK). The event was supported by The Asia Foundation, UKaid and Adam Smith International.
State Minister for Finance and Planning Muhammad Abdul Mannan attended the opening ceremony of the day-long event as the chief guest. Member (Senior Secretary) of Planning Commission General Economics Division (GED) Professor Dr Shamsul Alam chaired it.
The programme was also attended by Finance Secretary (in-charge) Muhammad Muslim Chowdhury and Country Representative of Asia Foundation Sara L Taylor, among others.
Addressing the meeting, Dr Shamsul Alam said the country has been maintaining a significant economic growth in the recent years, but it needs to focus more on environmental issues. "In terms of growth, we are doing well. But in terms of environment-conservation, we are lagging behind."
He underscored the need for preparing a strategic plan to sustain the growth with environment-friendly approach.
The country lost nearly $1.5 billion in one decade due to natural calamities, and the protection of environment may save a significant amount of the gross domestic production (GDP) per year, he added.
There were several technical sessions in the day-long event.
Speaking at a session, Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, Distinguished Fellow of Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), said it is high time the country should take necessary steps to ensure that the economic growth does not put negative impact on nature in order to make the progress sustainable.
Underscoring the need for an integrated approach to environmental issues, he said: "You cannot consider the environmental issue as something standalone, but we need to integrate it with all economic activities."
He also identified scarcity of data and documentation regarding environmental issues as a challenge in policy-making.
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