Reza Mahmud :
Huge potentials of coping blue economy in the Bay of Bengal is handicaped seriously due to lack of proper planning, experts said.
Bangladesh won in the maritime boundary dispute with Myanmar in 2012 and with India respectively in 2014 in two separate cases.
With these two awards an immense area of sea has been accessed and new prospects and possibilities have arisen.
Since the latest wining in maritime dispute with India, the government announced its plan to cope enormous potentials of blue economy in the Bay of Bengal.
Under the government’s plan of coping the potentials of blue economy, the Department of Environment (DoE) has taken several projects for assessing coastal and marine resources of Bay of Bengal.
One of the projects was ‘Determining the amount of coastal and marine resources and the environment and biodiversity for implementation of Blue Economy Action Plan’.
Dr. Md. Abdullah Al Mamun, Deputy Director (Chemical Waste Management Branch) of the Department of Environment, was the Project Director which officially started on January 2020 and ended December 2021.
But the project has not submitted any findings and trying to extend its tenure.
Contacted, Dr. Md. Abdullah Al Mamun, the PD of project told The New Nation on Saturday, “The tenure of the project may be extended for one more year as its researchers did not complete the work due to the pandemic.”
He said there is no findings as there are many limitations including fixed times of collecting fish.
“If you failed to collect fish in the due time for pandemic or other reasons, the time must be delayed further,” the PD said.
When contacted, Dr. Abdul Hamid, Director General of DoE told The New Nation on Saturday that he cannot say anything about implementation of the project as he joined the department one month before. Meanwhile, experts said, there are huge potentials in the country’s 1,18,813 kilometer’s maritime resources which really can change the whole economy of the country but yet to be tapped due to lack of proper planning.
When contacted, Professor Dr. Muhammad Muslem Uddin, Chairman, Oceanography Department, Chittagong University, told The New Nation on Saturday, “It needs a coordinated action plan to catch the potentials of blue economy successfully.” Maritime Special Planning (MSP) is a crucial thing for managing the whole prospective of the blue economy, he said.
The expert suggested to form a ‘Maritime Affair Ministry’ for making the potentials a real opportunity for changing the fate of the nation.
He said, there are many stakeholders in the ocean like tourism, shipping, economy, planning, environment and many others.
In this situation, a coordinated plan is very much necessary to stipulate zones for using the separate stakeholders and bringing the highest opportunity from the ocean, the expert suggested.
