Shipping and navigation through the Sundarbans is booming
like never before. Unauthorised navigation routes are expanding. The vessels
range from ocean-going mother and feeder cargo ships, container carriers, tankers, lighterage
ships, mid-size bulk cargo and tankers from inland waterways, and
trans-boundary cargo ships between Bangladesh and India. Without any sort of
environmental management in place, this increasing navigation and shipping are
multiplying the risk of accidents/spills and regular pollution in the world’s
largest mangrove forest.
It was a quiet and cool at daybreak in the world’s largest
mangrove forest – the Sundarbans – on December 28, 2008; amidst the morning
mist, I was heading towards the wildlife sanctuary. I was tired and fell asleep
on the deck as soon as the mechanised boat sailed, only to find myself rudely
awakened, with a giant cargo ship before my eyes, its siren-sound in my ears.
From the master bridge, the cargo crew was shouting toward
our tiny boat over loudspeakers. In response, our boatman was desperately
explaining ‘something’ with a diverse range of sign languages, it seemed. The
fact that we weren’t flying the Bangladeshi flag meant the cargo ship suspected
us of being pirates.
In the middle of all this, I somehow managed to locate where
we were. That’s when the question hit me: why is there a cargo vessel on the
Arpangasia river, deep inside the forest?
Accident or no accident,
Sundarbans suffers daily
Now, eight years after that face-off, in these times of
controversy and protests against a coal-fired mega-power plant in the impact
zone of the Sundarbans, the forest faces a very high volume of shipping and
navigation every day. Data from the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority
shows a 102% increase in cargo carrying between India and Bangladesh through
Sundarban waterways over the past 8 years. In 2008-09, a total of 9,44,422
metric tons of cargo was transported between India and Bangladesh under the
arrangement of the Protocol on Inland Water Transit and Trade (PIWT&T); and
in the last fiscal it was 19,12,526 metric tons.
The PIWT&T was first signed in 1972 and since then it
has been continuing without any interruption. The latest renewal was signed on
June 6, 2015. There are eight navigation routes permitted under this protocol,
four among those are laid near the Sundarbans.
Officially, the the acknowledged routes of PIWT&T are
drawn along northern edge of the forest. However, during my participation in
several learning trips throughout the last year I have found that the vessels
use four major de facto routes laid through the river and canals of the reserve
forests and wildlife sanctuaries. I have encountered vessels deep inside the
forest and even in the Sundarban West Wildlife Sanctuary – which is also a
UNESCO world heritage site – and on the
Arpangasia, Jamuna and Malancha rivers too. In the first half of 2015,
on average of 228 vessels used these routes monthly.
This is because the de jure
routes have not been navigable since the late ’90s. On the other hand,
data released by the Mongla Port Authority shows a 172% increase in the number
of ocean going vessels over the past eight years through the Passur river. In
the last fiscal, the total number of ocean-going vessels through this Sundarban
stream were 889, while it was only 326 in the year of 2008-09. Exact data of
shipping by domestic cargo ships is not available.
The Sela river, which runs through the sanctuaries for
endangered Irrawaddy and Ganges river dolphin and along the northern edge of
the Sundarban East Wildlife Sanctuary, has been under the spotlight since
December 9, 2014, when a wrecked tanker released approximately 94,000 gallons
(78,271 imperial gallons) of heavy fuel. The Sela oil spill brought devastating
consequence for the mangrove habitat and wildlife. The shocking picture of
oil-soaked birds other mega-fauna like
dolphins successfully drew local and global attention to the danger of
non-regulated navigation through a wetland of international significance as
designated under the Ramsar Convention also.
The shipping ministry suspended navigation through the
river, with huge press coverage in response, only to silently re-open it after
a few days. During four days of observation in four different months of 2015 at
the confluence of Sela and Passur rivers,
I have observed on average 17 ships are coming through. The inland
shipping authority has not made public
any shipping data in till date.
The question is, why does the Bangladesh government not
spare the Sela river and wildlife sanctuaries by diverting the Mongla-port
bound domestic vessels to the original port route – the Mongla-Ghashiakhali
channel? It is because the agencies are failing to maintain the depth and
navigability of the Ghashiakhali channel in the face of land grabbing by
‘influential’ shrimp businesses and other industries. Apparently, even a
directive from the prime minister’s office failed to remove the shrimp farms
and evict the land grabbers to permanently reopen the route.
Everyone said the devastations from Sela oil spill is an
eye-opener for the responsible authorities, but after more than one and half
years, it is clear that it was not. Just months after the accident two other
wrecked vessels released tonnes of fertiliser and coal into the rivers in May
and October, 2015 respectively.
‘Lot of ships will be coming, carrying so much
coal’
Now, with the 1320-megawatt coal-fired power station, a
joint venture by Bangladesh and India near the Sundarbans on the anvil, the
National Shipping Corporation has started the process of procuring 16 new
vessels to carry coal for the power plant. The mega plant will need an
estimated 4.72 million tons of coal per year to be imported through Sundarban
rivers. Beside combustion of coal in the forest’s impact zone, the power plant
is going to aggravate the unsustainable industrialization in the
state-acknowledged ecologically critical area near the forest, and it will
boost shipping on a larger scale.
This coal-fired mega power plant is going to be a deciding
factor for the fate of Sundarban. For Bangladesh’s government, it is not about
merely building a power plant close to or far from the mangrove forest. Prime
Minister Sheikh Hasina in her latest briefing on this issue made it very clear
that her government is determined to meet the growing demands of electricity
for the country’s envisioned industrialization. And this ‘Bangladesh-India
Friendship Thermal Power Plant’ at Rampal is one of those coal-based plants the
government has decided to install in different parts of the country to meet the
growing electricity demand, she said. The government thinks coal is more
suitable than petroleum, natural gas and other fuels in terms of availability
and price. Moreover, areas close to the sea are best suited for building
coal-fired plants because it reduces the shipping cost of imported coal, she
added.
So, even though the government endorsed Environmental Impact
Assessment report acknowledges some threats originating from the mega-project,
it decided to carry on. The EIA states that the proposed jetty to unload coal
in the Sundarbans, and shipping through the forest, will cause oil spillage,
air, noise and light pollution. An
influential member of the ruling party and cabinet, finance minister M.A.
Muhith recently said publicly that the Sundarbans are surely going to suffer
due to this power plant but the government will proceed with the project. ‘A
lot of ships will be coming, carrying so much coal. So flora and fauna will be
substantially affected,’ said Muhith, who is also the founding president of
Bangladesh’s most familiar environmental civil society platform, ‘Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon’.
Given the continuous manifold increase in international,
regional and inland shipping through threatened wildlife sanctuaries and
reserves, the odds are very high that devastating accidents will happen.
Nevertheless, there is no mandatory standard for ship safety features to
mitigate the risk of accident. The forest and environmental authorities are
seemingly comfortable with rapidly increasing shipping through the Sundarbans.
More than one decade after signing a MoU with the concerned
regional forum to develop and adopt a national contingency plan to respond to
oil spills and other chemical leakage, there is no known progress till date.
Immediately after the hela oil spill, the ministry of environment and forest
said that they revived the efforts for contingency plan under a UNDP supported
initiative. However, I do not know of any progress made though the project
expired. When contacted, the chief conservator of forests, Md. Yunus Ali, said,
‘This task was given to the department ofeEnvironment. They conducted consultations
with stakeholders in their office. I am not updated yet about finalisation of
the contingency plan.’
Increased shipping not only multiplies risks from oil spill,
the release of coal, chemical, fertilizer and fly ash by accident; in course of
routine operation, vessels discharge ballast water, bilge water, and there is
cargo tank washing too. There is also the impact of ship-induced waves on the
mangrove ecosystem, disturbance to wildlife and the risk of international
wildlife trafficking spreading widely with regular vessel based pollution.
The moving and manoeuvring of vessels induce a variety of
hydrodynamic changes and physical forces which have an impact on the
surrounding flow, alluvial banks and sediments of the rivers. These impacts
potentially harm the environment and can ultimately lead to environmental
degradation.
The growth of Mongla port also comes with increasing risk of
Invasive Aquatic Species for the delicate ecosystem of the Sundarbans.
According to resources available with international Ballast Water Management
Consortium- GloBallast; the introductions of alien species by ballast water in
the hulls of vessels have negative effects on mangrove habitats. For instance,
they hugely compete with indigenous species for space and food.
In the absence of minimum environmental management and
preparedness, Bangladesh and India are allowing a high volume of shipping,
navigation and industrialisation in and around the Sundarban mangrove region.
Even in the British colonial period, when the 21st century’s new obligation of
‘sustainability’ was nowhere to be heard, the authorities were very careful to
avoid using the rivers and canals inside the Sundarbans for shipping and
navigation. In the era of ‘golden fiber’ jute trade between the Khulna-Barisal
regions and Kolkata, the ‘River Conservancy’ was there in the bureaucratic
consideration to maintain navigability of waterways outside the Sundarbans.
‘History of the Rivers in the Gangetic Delta, 1750-1918’, a
report prepared by a former chief engineer of the colonial irrigation
department, C. Addams Williams,
describes some of the many
initiatives to maintain the navigability of the northern waterways of
Gorai-Modhumoti river systems. Those rivers still exist, with inadequate water
flow however. For safer trade routes, Bangladesh and India can work together to
improve the navigability of northern rivers by simply increasing the upstream
water flow and establishing a environmental management regime for Mongla port
bound ships through the Passur river.
Mohammad Arju is a journalist and marine conservationist.
Email arju@saveoursea.social
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