Towards sustainable environmental governance in Bangladesh
Strong leadership is required at central and local governments institutions to bring about meaningful and effective environmental governance reform
Dr. Ansarul Karim
Sustainable Development has been the committed goal of the Government of Bangladesh. Sustainable environmental governance is pre requisite for achieving the SDG. Under the dynamic and able leadership of Honorable PM Sheikh Hasina Bangladesh has achieved MDG goals and made significant progress in attaining SDG targets. Although the government has taken some milestone initiative in the environmental sector legal reforms and biodiversity conservation measures, the overall country performance of the environmental sector is very poor in comparison to the poorer countries of the region. Global Environmental Performance Index estimated by Yale University ranked Bangladesh 178th out of 179 countries.
Forest Department is a century old institution staffed with professional cadres trained in Forest Management. FD is responsible for Forest resource management of the country as well as management of protected areas in the forest land.The Department is also seriously handicapped with staff resources. Recently the Department has been vested with management of Marine Protected area of the Swatch of No Ground (SoNG-MPA) and 3 Dolphin Parks in the inland rivers. The Department does not poses technical capacity or logistics to manage Marine Protected Area and the aquatic biodiversity in the inland wetlands.
Although the FD is implementing one type of Co-management system in some of the PAs involving local people but its effectiveness to achieve PA objectives still to be realized. The area coverage of the PAs has increased significantly under the present government. However, the management is still delinked from the mainstream development program and wellbeing of the politogeographic region where it is located. As a results PAs remain as isolated islands floating only in the donors country program.
Bangladesh Marine Fisheries Ordinance 1983 and Protection and Conservation of Fish Act, 1950 (East Bengal Act No. XVIII of 1950), Protection and Conservation of Fish Rules, 1985.The GoB has also declared four different areas covering 204 sq nautical miles of the fishing ground of the south patches and the middle ground as marine reserve under section 28 of the Marine Fisheries Ordinance 1983 to provide safe breeding ground for fishery species inside Bangladesh territory to conserve and develop marine fisheries resources.To protect the single largest Hilsa fishery from recruitment overfishing and growth overfishing, the GoB has declared five sanctuaries in the Meghna-Padma Rivers, other tributaries and inshore waters under Bangladesh Protection and Conservation of Fish Act 1950.The Department has logistics and experts on marine fisheries and animals which supports the logic to declare MPAs under the Fisheries Ordinance and logical candidate for Marine PA management. Vesting the Protection and Monitoring of Marine Biodiversity of the MPA to the FD who does not have technical expertise or logistics to petrol marine water is futile exercise.
The government has also declared 13 wetlands areas of biodiversity importance as ECAs under the section 5 of the Bangladesh Environment Conservation Act, 1995. As per the Act and ECA Rule 2016 Department of Environment will prepare and implement Management Plan for the ECAs. The peculiarity and inconsistency of the legal regime in this case is that the law divided biodiversity conservation between different Departmentsunder the same Ministry (MOEF)or different ministries without considering the technical capabilities of those departments which resulted inefficient resource management and biodiversity protection. Though DoEs Mission is primarily regulatory function, assigning the responsibility to manage ecosystem resources to DoE is wastage of the sparse resources of DoE.
Judiciary particularly Higher Judiciary in Bangladesh has positively contributed towards establishing environmental rights of the citizen. However, in environmental cases there is no provision for taking expert opinion. In the absence of proper scientific advice the courts decision likely to becomes blunt. Example is the Appellate Division order to revert forest land to forest department in Coxs Bazar Pourashavahas been overturned by the inapt bureaucracy and corrupt officials of the district administration. Appropriate expert opinion could help the court and the litigants with knowledge of scientific complexity and regulatory and technical advice relevant to the case. Using appropriate information and technical data the experts can help in assessing regulatory enforcement issues, permit questions, cleanup standards and potential liability issues. An appropriate environmental expert can also assist the court in identifying evidentiary needs and data gaps necessary for the thorough analysis of the case and suggest tests and experiment to fill the data gap.
Sound knowledge management is fundamental to identify, create, share effectively utilize organizational information to take appropriate decision. The DoE as the technical arm of the MOEFCC is responsible to provide practical and implementable solutions of the adverse impact of the development projects so that environments are protected. In the process of countrywide environmental management and natural management, vast amounts of information and knowledge have been generated, and many lessons have been learned from successes and failures in addressing environmental concerns in the relevant government organizations. But current knowledge acquisition, and sharing Knowledge in those organizations are scattered and also inconsistent. At the non-government level, national and international NGOs, universities and research organization accumulate wealth of information, experiences and knowledge on the environment. The effective management of environmentally related information is brought about by delivering information that is appropriate for the decision-making tasks at hand.The rapid growth of information technology continues to provide more effective tools to support knowledge management and transfer. New information tools offer much promise, but in and of themselves are not a panacea.
Role of Civil Society Organizations played significant role in creating awareness about environmental issues in line with the global trend of sustainable development, climate change and biodiversity conservation. Some NGOs particularly Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association and Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh (HRPB) also played effective role in establishing environmental rights through court mandate.
Many other NGOs such as Association of Development NGOs in Bangladesh (ADAB) and Coalition of NGOs and FEJB played significant role in creating awareness and acted as pressure group to mitigate environmental impact of FAP project and also Developing NEMAP. NGOs and Bangladesh press and electronic media also played considerable role in Climate Change negotiations and River Protection and Conservation measures adopted by GOB and the High Court of Bangladesh.
Bangladesh has provided dynamic leadership in eradicating poverty and other socioeconomic development. The government has also undertaken some far reaching positive steps for improvement of environment and Climate change. The most crucial challenge remains however is the absence of a dynamic and proactive stewardship able to design and enforce policies and implementing at multiple levels of administration to further strengthen and enhance the overall environmental governance. Her vision and commitment of integrated economic, social development and improvement of environmental health at various level of administration provide an opportunity to undertake comprehensive reforms in regulatory regime required for sustainable, coordinated environmental action planning and implementation at various level of government both urban and rural local governments.
Strong leadership is required at central and local governments institutions to bring about meaningful and effective environmental governance reform, which will work more efficiently for the betterment of the environment of Bangladesh, and would be built upon the values of equity and accountability. Time has come to take measures to restructure the entire environmental governance system to make it more responsive to the requirement of rapidly deteriorating environment and depleting natural resources.
The writer is a former faculty of Chittagong University and Environment and Climate Change Expert
