It is really very surprising that the government itself has de-reserved and handed over 20 acres of forestland in Cox’s Bazar to the Bangladesh Football Federation for building a football training camp. Now the question arises as to why the government declared certain areas with flora and fauna as ‘reserved forests’ in the first place.
True, the government has the right to de-reserve any forestland or declare a forest no longer reserved through a gazette, according to Section-27 (1) of Forest Act-1927. But environmentalists are right to point out that a football training academy is not for national indispensable interest. And state-managed reserved forests should not be used for non-forest purposes. Now the point is, could it not be possible for the government to select another venue in the plain land for this football training academy?
According to a national daily report yesterday, the 20 acres of forestland in Cox’s Bazar’s Ramu upazila belongs to a region that is home to endangered Asian elephants. The report said that funded by FIFA, the piece of land that has been transferred to BFF will be used in building a technical centre including two football fields, a medical centre and a four-storey dormitory. For this about 30,000 trees will have to be felled.
This is just a recipe for disaster in the environmental sense. According to statistics, for the last three decades, denuding of forest covers is going on at 2.1 per cent annually in Bangladesh. But, for maintaining environmental balance, we need 20 per cent of forest cover of the total land. In reality it is only 11 per cent now. It is really ironic that when the scenario is so bleak, we have to see this mindless decision of building a football training centre in a reserved forest area.
Moreover, unabated felling of trees in the reserved forests also is so common. We had reports of tribal people who were indiscriminately destroying the unclassified forests in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) area and the forest department could not do anything to prevent them because of security reasons.
The campaign for social forestation is also conspicuously absent in the country. Statistics says 726 animal and 90 plant species have already disappeared from Bangladesh and this makes it an imperative that we have to take up the programme of preserving our forests with utmost seriousness besides taking up environment-friendly activities. The government is telling us that it is serious about protecting the flora and fauna of the country. But reality on the ground does not corroborate this. One glaring example of this is the recent decision of de-reserving forests in Cox’s Bazar.
If we ourselves cannot protect our valuable forest areas, then who will?
