Bandarban Correspondent :
Tahzingdong, a non-governmental voluntary organisation working on issues of the environment and socio-economic development in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), has won the Energy Globe Award in Earth category at the COP22.
Tahzingdong has won the award for its project on the restoration and conservation of community-managed forest resources in the Bandarban hill district. The award was declared on November 10, 2016 in Marrakech, Morocco, at COP22-the 22nd Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Founder of Energy Globe Foundation Wolfgang Neumann handed over the award to the Tahzingdong authority at a programme on March 17 this year.
To inform people about winning of the award and the project, the organisation held a press conference at a local hotel on Sunday with CHT Affairs Secretary Nabo Bikram Kishor Tripura as chief guest. Vice-Chairman of CHT Development Board Tarun Kumar Ghosh, Executive Director of Aranyak Foundation of Bangladesh Farid Uddin Ahmed, Executive Director of Tahzingdong Ching Shing Pru and journalists of electronic and print media were present there.
Sources said that Tahzingdong supported by Aranyak Foundation of Bangladesh, has been implementing this project since 2009. The project covers 12,919.64 hectares of nine community-conserved areas, which are commonly called ‘village common forests’, and includes more than 1,000 indigenous forest-dependent families. Tahzingdong has built two community houses as part of institutional capacity building, and installed two water supply technologies that capture more than 387,000 litres of clean water in a month from the forests using a gravitational flow system. This system has reduced water scarcity within the community and 70 per cent of waterborne diseases.
Moreover, the organisation has planted 28,545 seedlings in the community-managed forests, including bamboo, cane, and endangered species, sources also said.
Many fruit seedlings have been planted in homesteads to increase forest and biodiversity conservation, as well as to prevent soil erosion of the water bodies. Three hundred sets of improved cooking stoves and 20 sets of solar panels have been provided to help maintain a clean and green environment. Fifty per cent of household-based biomass and the resulting carbon dioxide emissions have gone down in the villages and improved women’s health condition. Alternative livelihood-generating support initiatives have been started, which have increased the income of vulnerable communities.
It is mentionable that the Energy Globe Award was founded in 1999 by the Austrian energy pioneer Wolfgang Neumann and is one of the most prestigious environmental awards today. The two other finalists for the award this year were the Inga Foundation of Honduras and AMSED of Morocco.
