THE preservation of farmland and forests has become all the more important at a time when growing industrialization in the country is squeezing much of such land to a critical level. There is no doubt we need more industries to create jobs and income generation activities for the growing number of workforce joining the labour market every year.
But protection to agriculture to produce enough food and forestland to preserve environment is equally important and that is what Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday said asking the authorities concerned to keep it in mind. Her suggestion to put a brake to indiscriminate setting up of industries and real estates destroying forest and cultivable lands makes sense. The message bears the note for those who are at work to grab valuable public and private land to set up industries and needless to say her party men are at the helm of such grabbing.
Diverting farmland to industry has always been a contentious issue. Such attempt led to a bloody fight in Banshkhali Upazila in Chittagong district last month in which five people were killed in police firing as the locals tried to resist setting up of a power plant on their land. Occupation of farmland around the capital and other industrial cities and bloody resistance to such moves by locals often make headlines in the media. In many cases real estate owners are occupying arable land dispossessing the owners and destroying forests.
In a country with over 160 million people continuous depletion of arable land has become a growing concern. It is really a highly paradoxical situation because we need more land for industries when local and foreign inevestments have already slowed down in absence of suitable land to set up mills and factories. Rapid expansion of human habitat is also adding to the pressure making land use a highly critical issue. The government’s plan to set up several dozens special economic zones is then going to add more pressure on land but such expansion is also important to supply growing domestic and export markets.
Given that the land scarcity is reaching the critical levels, we believe some basic rethinking about the land use must be at work. One of the good steps may be to have stringent laws, which will prohibit sales of arable land for non-farm activities and punish those who will encroach forestland. Dhaka-Chittagong highway shows big billboards of big business houses on both sides laying huge land unused. Its use must be ensured. Unused land in the premises of big state-owned enterprises such as jute mills may also be released for use by local and foreign investors. In our view a timely land use policy must be formulated now to allow industries to grow and farmland at the same time to be saved.
