| Popis: |
The delta land Bangladesh has a unique coastline where numerous rivers meet the Bay of Bengal, creates a complex net of tidal river estuaries, forming the base for world’s largest mangrove forest the Sundarbans. Chalna is small town located at the confluence of Rupsha and Chunkuri rivers, only 9 km north of the Sundarbans, and a well know river port. The Sundarbans, which acts as a buffer between the sea and the human habitats including arable lands. The forest is rich in unique biodiversity and natural resources providing livelihoods of a large number of people living in the towns and villages around it. As the region is near the sea and land morphology is plain and of low altitude it is always vulnerable to natural disasters. Due to global warming and sea level rising the land mass is vulnerable to flooding. The sign of climate change; erratic behavior of rainfall and draught, intrusion of salinity etc., are changing the usual pattern of agriculture and fishing, affecting the livelihoods of the people here. The eco system of this mangrove forest is also threatened by recent policies of the Government and initiatives of private sectors of establishing high risk industrial establishments like thermal power plant, liquid petroleum gas stations etc., around Chalna and its surrounding region in sprawling manner. The potential of running large number of vessels through the rivers and canals of the Sundarbans might have negative impacts of the flora and fauna living there. Popular protests against these harmful interventions are being observed, international public organizations and concerned learned societies are also recommending not let these damaging developments going on. Although there are some promises from the government to the international agencies, there is no sign of management of such developments. This paper systematically investigates the reasons of this phenomenon, identifies the challenges and concludes that; absence of regional spatial planning in Bangladesh, neglecting the values of environment and public goods, defying the regulations in various ways and not accounting public opinions in the decision making process are the core ones. |
