Anisul Islam Noor :
The government’s hide and seek policy over the proposed 1320MW Rampal coal-fired Power Plant creates confusion about the safety of the world heritage mangrove Sundarbans.
Many environment experts and workers say that an influential adviser of the Prime Minister’s office played the key role in getting the project approved by DoE.
Though the Department of Environment (DoE) approved the project at Rampal, it imposed a lot of conditions to save the mangrove from the ecological imbalance, sources said. One of the conditions was that an independent body of
environmental experts would monitor its ecological compliances as set by the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
Referring to recommendations, a top DoE official said that special emphasis was given on forming of an independent monitoring body.
As per the DoE suggestions, the independent body/committee will comprise environmentalists, civil society members, university teachers and experts. They will monitor every aspect of the government activities relating to compliance issues. The committee or the body must be free from government influences.
Admitting about the requirement of the independent body or a committee, DoE Director Sultan Ahmed said that the committee should be formed as soon as possible. He told the New Nation, “We are optimistic that an initiative will be taken from the government’s highest level shortly.”
Bangladesh and India are jointly implementing the Rampal power Plant Project at a location close to the Sundarbans, the world’s longest mangrove forest, which has been declared a world heritage by the United Nations.
The country’s environmental groups and several political parties are vigorously opposing the project fearing a disaster for the Sundarbans and its ecology.
Syeda Rizwana Hasan, Executive Director of Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA), said, it is unlikely that the government would form any independent environmental monitoring body to oversee the Rampal project.
Rizwana, who won the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize, however, said, BELA is deadly against the Rampal project from the very beginning. “We have already rejected the ‘faulty’ EIA report,” she said.
The impact of the coal-fired power plant would be negative and irreversible from physical, biological, social, economic and environment points of view, she said.
Dr Abdullah Harun Chowdhury, Professor of Environmental Science Discipline at Khulna University, who also conducted an EIA on his own found that the Rampal Power Plant project would cause more harm to the Sundarbans and the environment than doing good to the country.
