Govt fails to weigh environmental pollution impact

EDITORIAL

ROUTINE violations of environmental regulations are in plain sight. A photograph that New Age published on Saturday depicts how untreated effluent from nearby industries pollutes a canal at Shyampur in Dhaka. Illegal structures are erected on the canal. Children play in the polluted water and poultry birds drink water from it. Not just the canals, but rivers too are subjected to pollution. Most industries in and around Dhaka release untreated effluents directly into the Buriganga, Sitalakhya, Balu and Turag, taking advantage of a lax enforcement of environmental laws and regulations. Even when the government takes actions, it cannot ensure the expected outcome because of the negligence of enforcement officers and indifference of industry owners. After a protracted legal battle, tanneries at Hazaribagh in Dhaka, having the notorious legacy of polluting the Buriganga, were relocated to the Leather Industrial Estate at Savar. But the process also relocated the problem of river, how leaving the River Dhaleswari to be polluted. The river and surrounding areas at Savar are reported to have been polluted by at least 20,000 cubic metres of untreated effluents and an unknown quantity of solid wastes of the relocated tanneries every day. It is appears from the situation that laws exist but they are not enforced.

In general, industrial practices are negligent and indifferent towards maintaining environmental and public health standards. A majority of industrial units are in operation without effluent treatment plants. It is often reported that government factories producing fertiliser, cement, glass sheet, paper and sanitary ware run without environmental clearance certificates. These violations leave people with no choice but to live in a toxic environment. Such exposure to chemical waste is not only taxing for the environment but also injurious to public health. Scientists and public health experts have already documented severe health effects of living in such an environment. The documented case of environmental pollution and health hazards of tanneries at Hazaribagh paints a grim picture. People living in the area have developed chronic skin disease and asthma and the tanneries almost destroyed aquatc biodiversity of the Buriganga. The establishment of the environmental court was lauded, it, too, has failed to protect the environment due to the influence of the government and industrial elite.

The failure of successive governments in protecting the environment, more specifically natural water resources, is a failure to perform their constitutional obligations of protecting and conserving rivers, wetland and forests. Other recent laws — the Bangladesh Water Act 2013, National River Protection Commission Act 2013 and the Environment Conservation Act 1995 — also constitutionally bind the government to protect the environment. It is time that the government took environmental disasters seriously, considering that scientists for long have identified Bangladesh as the ecologically critical zone and predicted that it would bear the worst blow of global warming. 

• Courtesy: New Age /Jan 20, 2019