Protect Bangladeshs biodiversity
Bangladesh is richly endowed with a vast variety of flora and fauna due to its unique geophysical location which are maintaining balance ecosystem. The quality of the air we breathe, the food we eat and the water we drink depend directly on the state of our biodiversity, which is now in severe jeopardy. We need a transformational change in our relationship with nature to ensure the sustainable future we want for ourselves and our children.
Mammals in the wild are not very visible in Bangladesh just like the world over - because they have been under human pressure for thousands of years. Even so, we have 127 species of mammals in Bangladesh. The Bengal tiger is of course the best-known. We are also rich in primates. Our ten primate species range from the hoolock gibbon, the only ape in Southern Asia, to the slow loris, a distant relative of Madagascars exotic lemurs.
Thankfully, we can point to meaningful progress on the protection and conservation of biodiversity over the past 10 years. For example, the annual rate of net forest loss has been halved; global protected areas have increased to 13 per cent of coastal and marine areas and 15 per cent of terrestrial areas (although not all world ecoregions are adequately covered, and most protected areas are not well connected); and the number of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture secured in conservation facilities has risen. These successes are not, however, nearly enough to halt the ongoing loss of plant and animal diversity - a fundamental worldwide extinction crisis, deepening every year, and severely aggravated by climate change.
Like our other natural resources, biodiversity is playing a crucial role in our economic development and achieving human wellbeing. Besides keeping our air breathable, biodiversity serves us with food, water supply, medicines, clothes, shelters, etc. It is, however, difficult to understand and measure all contributions of biodiversity to our lives given, on the one hand, the multifaceted nature of these contributions and, on the other, the complex relationships between the natural ecosystems and the ones we have modified. The risk faced by many species in Bangladesh is growing in urgency and it is about time we start valuing the importance of each to the sustainability of local ecosystems and ultimately the global ecosystem.
