DEFYING the repeated pleas of environmentalists, the government reopened the Shela river route after 26 days of the oil spill of 3.58 lakh litres furnace oil that spread out across the entire length of the river. A vernacular daily said, at least 400 water vessels carrying furnace oil, cement, crops, stone, and other bio-hazards plied the river on Wednesday to reach Mongla port — actions that could spell another catastrophe at anytime.
The oil spill which occurred on December 9, 2014, compelled the government to suspend the plying of vessels through the Shela river as the spill destroyed the biodiversity and the ecosystem of the world’s largest mangrove forest which had an estimated worth of Tk 100 crore. The decision for reopening the Shela route for commercial vessels was taken despite the opposition of the Environment and Forest Ministry and in defiance of the laws of wildlife conservation, environment protection, Unesco’s World Heritage Commission and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
The government first allowed vessels’ movement through the Sundarbans in April 2011 as the Mongla-Ghasiakhali Channel lost its navigability due to heavy silting. The Shipping Minister recently informed that the government had already started dredging the 31km of Mongla-Ghasiakhali Channel. As this river route is under the Bangladesh-India Goods Carrying Protocol, so the vessels’ numbers have increased since 2012. However, the fact remains that only 7 percent of the dredging work of Mongla-Ghasiakhali Channel has been completed so far. Rejecting the Environment Ministry’s repeated pleas, Shipping Minister recently said that his Ministry was not considering a permanent ban on the plying of commercial vessels through the Shela river in the Sundarbans, meaning nature is waiting to be struck with another disaster.
Meanwhile, the United Nations team that visited affected areas in the world’s largest mangrove forest to assess the impact of the oil slick and advised the government on how to reduce risks of a similar disaster, strongly recommended restrictions on the plying of vessels through the Shela. Therefore, to allow the commercial vessels through the river — the real cause of the havoc — will only increase the chances for yet another disaster to occur in the world’s largest mangrove forest and also the most dignified world heritage site of Bangladesh. The reopening of the Shela route for commercial traffic will bring, as feared, man-made catastrophes to pristine nature.
The Shipping Ministry and the business community are but conveniently using the argument of economy and trade to justify their continued abuse of the waterway flowing through the Sundarbans. But in doing so they are missing the bigger perspective, the longer-term national interest of preserving the Sundarbans’ delicate ecological balance. This is the worst kind of myopia.
