[Attachment(s) from Ripan Biswas included below]
Dear Editor, Hope you are doing well and thanks for publishing my previous write ups. This is an article titled "Destroying trees will cost a lot". I will be highly honoured if you publish this article. I apprecite your time to read this article. Thanks Have a nice time With Best Regards Ripan Kumar Biswas New York, U.S.A -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Destroying trees will cost a lot Ripan kumar biswas Ripan.biswas@yahoo..com Whenever I see the 70-foot-tall digital billboard outside the Penn Station in Manhattan, New York, displaying the running total of long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, I scare how the changing climate is pushing many Earth systems towards critical thresholds that will alter regional and global environmental balances and threaten stability at multiple scales. We are altering the environment far faster than we can possibly predict the consequences. And climate change is not something that we can fix whenever we want. Comparable climate shifts have happened before, but over tens of centuries, not tens of years. The unprecedented rapid change could accelerate the already high rate of species extinction as plants and animals fail to adapt quickly enough. For the first time in history, humans are affecting the ecological balance of not just a region but the entire world, all at once. Almost every day we seem to hear of yet another problem affecting the environment and the problem includes pollution, acid rain, global warming, the destruction of rainforests and other wild habitats, the decline and extinction of thousands of species of animals and plants....and so on. We have all the economic, intellectual and technological know-how to head off this calamity and avoid the disruption and misery that inaction would entail. These range from energy saving measures and clean and renewable energy sources, to more efficient transport and better planning and management of our economies. The solutions are probably numerous and, according to many economists, ecologists, and environmentalists, even affordable when compared with the costs of complacency. But forests and trees can take a central and pivotal role to slow down and reverse some of the damage of climate change if we utilize and sustainably manage them. At the global level, trees and forests are closely linked with weather patterns and also the maintenance of a crucial balance in nature. As trees are important for a variety of reasons, offering numerous benefits for mankind, wildlife and the environment, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has launched a major worldwide tree planting campaign.. Under the "Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign," people, communities, business and industry, civil society organizations and governments are encouraged to enter tree planting pledges with the objective of planting at least one billion trees worldwide each year. In a call to further individual and collective action, UNEP has set a new goal of planting 7 billion trees by the end of 2009. The campaign strongly encourages the planting of indigenous trees and trees that are appropriate to the local environment. While the movement towards a deeper commitment to environmental protection through planting new trees and taking care of the existing ones is rapidly increasing all over the world, a 10 km stretch of Teknaf beach in southeastern Bangladesh has turned barren after over 30,000 Jhau (tamarisk) trees were felled by a section of local influential people within seven days in the week of September 7-13, 2009. The forest department and other law enforcement agencies remained silent spectators of the mindless tree felling. This report surely doesn't match with the government earlier declaration that says government is going to give over 700,000 acres of land for tree plantation through a national campaign this year as part of Bangladesh's Climate Change Strategy Action Plan, which was finalized by an inter-ministerial committee on Wednesday, August 26, 2009. Although law enforcement agencies arrested over half a dozen people, including a former forest guard on charges of felling tamarisk tress on September 15, 2009 and recovered about 7,500 felled trees from different nearby villages of the beach, but the damage done to the environment through denuding the land, will bring irremediable natural calamity to the coastal life of Teknaf. As costal forests act as bioshields, around half a million tamarisk trees were planted in 1995 on 700 acres of sandy beach on a stretch of about 10 km from Shahparir Dwip in Sabrang Union of the upazila to Baharchhara to save life and properties of the people living along the Teknaf coast from erosion. But now this stretch in Cox's Bazaar runs a high risk in any natural disaster like cyclone and tidal surge as it has become denuded land. Bangladesh that frequently faces crucial natural behavior is at high risk from the impacts of climate change. People who can no longer farm on drowning coastal land are falling inward to cities already crammed with jobless and desperate masses. Smaller than Illinois, US, Bangladesh has 152.6 million people, half the US population. Imagine what it will be like in 50 years, when the Bay of Bengal is predicted to cover 11 percent of Bangladesh's land. By some estimates, a one-meter sea level rise would submerge about one-third of Bangladesh's total area, uprooting 25-30 million people. Bangladesh is set to disappear under the waves by the end of the century, says NASA. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that Bangladesh was on course to lose 17% of its land and 30% of its food production by 2050. Bangladesh has already begun to feel the effects of climate change as flood periods have become longer and cyclones cause greater devastation. As sea-levels rise, the IPCC warned that 35 million refugees could flee Bangladesh's flooded delta by 2050. "We have a short time to avert serious climate change. We need action and we need to plant trees. Countering climate change can take root via one billion small but significant acts in our gardens, parks, countryside and rural areas," said Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP at the launching of "Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign." The same call has been pronounced by the President of Bangladesh Zillur Rahman when he was inaugurating the afforestation programme-2009 at Bangabhaban, Dhaka on June 25, 2009. "We've to plant trees immensely to bring back the lost serene environment," he said. Globally, forest cover is at least one-third less than what it once was. Trees provide not only environmental protection, but also significant income and livelihood options globally for more than one billion forest-dependent people. Trees provide a wide range of products such as timber, fruit, medicine, beverages, fodder and services like carbon sequestration, shade, beautification, erosion control, soil fertility. Without trees human life would be unsustainable. Their beauty adds diversity to the world's natural landscape. Trees also play an important cultural, spiritual and recreational role in many societies. In some cases, they are integral to the very definition and survival of indigenous and traditional cultures. While we need to plant and preserve existing trees and forests to restore the earths forests cover, the expanding carbon sinks, and to lessen the impact of global warming, some influential people in Bangladesh backed by political leaders or government officials, don't hesitate to destroy the valuable trees and forests for their ulterior motive. And their illegal attempts repeatedly prove beyond any doubt that how much the government is concern about the environment and greenery at the field level. The longer the risk is ignored, the more drastic the consequences. Wednesday, September 16, 2009, New York Ripan Kumar Biswas is a freelance writer based in New York |
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