Financial Express

Views & Reviews

The International Tiger Day

Saving tiger population from extinction

by Tarequl Islam Munna
Published:  July 29, 2018

July 29, Global Tiger Day comes as a reminder of a crisis: Tiger population in Bangladesh has been on the decline for many years now. And Tiger is an endangered species, globally. The reasons are aplenty - poaching, loss of habitat, and other human conflicts.

Tigers have been on the planet for about two million years with the earliest fossils having been discovered in Java nearly 1.6-1.8 million years ago. Once ranging widely across Asia, their range has shrunk of late. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says tigers worldwide are in serious danger of facing extinction.

An ambitious Global Tiger Recovery Programme and Conservation Goal to double the number of wild tigers by the year 2022 was set by the governments of 13 tiger range countries. The countries are India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, Bhutan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, China and Russia. The goal, according to the WWF and International Tiger Forum, is called Tx2.

Breeding the population of Tigers is currently found in eight range states -- India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Russia. India is home to 70 per cent of global tiger population. Therefore, the country has an important role to play in tiger conservation.As per the WWF estimates, the tiger population across the world has grown from 3,200 to 3,890 in a period of five years, a 22 per cent increase (up to 2016).

Bangladesh-India Joint Tiger Census Project conducted the tiger census in 2015 examining some 1,500 images and footprints of the animal taken from Sundarban through camera trapping and found the horribly low figure of tigers. In the first phase of the Bangladesh-India joint tiger census project, completed in April 2015 after beginning on November 01, 2013, some 89 infrared cameras were used to capture tigers' movements within a 3,000-sqkm area in the Bangladesh part of Sundarban. The second phase of tiger census project, that began on November 12, 2014, is using the camera trapping method.

Bangladesh has to wait until 2019 to know whether the number of tigers in Sunderban has gone up or fallen further, said officials conducting a census in the country's lone natural tiger habitat.

WWF fears that the tiger population may disappear by the end of this century as the rising sea levels caused by climate change destroy their habitat in Sundarban. A UNESCO World Heritage Site shared by India and Bangladesh at the mouth of the Ganges River, Sundarban is the world's largest single block of mangrove forest.

Using the rates of sea level rise projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Fourth Assessment Report (2007), the authors of the study wrote that a 28cm sea level rise may be realised around 2070, at which point the tigers will be unlikely to survive in Sundarban. However, recent research suggests that the seas may rise even more swiftly than that was predicted in the 2007 IPCC assessment.

Most conservationists agree that strong protection of wildlife reserves has been the key to the endangered tigers' survival so far. It is vital, however, that wildlife conservation and habitat protection are not isolated solutions, but an important part of a multifaceted tiger survival strategy.

Habitat loss is only one of several significant threats to the endangered tigers' survival. As long as the demand and market for tiger parts in traditional Chinese medicine thrive, lives of tigers will continue to remain threatened. Economic and political circumstances within many of the tiger countries also require serious attention and international support.

As crown predators, tigers sit on top of the food chain. If there is insufficient prey for them to hunt, their numbers will not increase. Ensuring adequate numbers of animals as prey is a challenge faced by all tiger conservationists. Animal experts are beginning to obtain field permits to survey and monitor tigers in politically and economically unstable countries, and continue to work with the governments to preserve key tiger habitat and establish protective reserves. Financial and professional support for these efforts is vital if we are to save the wild tiger before the very last one is gone like Bali, Caspian and Javan tigers.

TIGER SUBSPECIES: The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recognises nine subspecies. The six subspecies still found in the wild are: 1. Bengal tiger, 2. Siberian tiger, 3. Indochinese tiger, 4. Malayan tiger, 5. South China tiger, 6. Sumatran tiger. Three considered to be critically endangered are: 1. The South China Tiger, 2. The Sumatran Tiger, and 3. The Malayan Tiger. And three further subspecies declared extinct are: 1. Bali, 2. Caspian, and 3. Javan Tigers. All three have been extinct due to hunting, poaching and a loss of habitat. Together, these have resulted in the extinction of three of these subspecies just a decade ago.

The Bali tiger is an extinct subspecies of tiger that used to be found solely on the Indonesian island of Bali. It was one of three subspecies of tigers found in Indonesia, together with the Javan tiger, which is also extinct, and the critically endangered Sumatran tiger. It was the smallest of the tiger subspecies. Bali tigers were last positively recorded from western Bali in the late 1930s. The Bali Barat National Park was established in 1941 in tiger habitat, but it is likely that Bali tiger became extinct by the end of World War II or possibly as late as the early 1950s. The Bali tiger is classified as extinct by the IUCN.

The Caspian tiger is an extinct tiger subspecies also known as the Hyrcanian tiger, the Mazandaran tiger, the Persian tiger and the Turanian tiger. Caspian Tigers were found in the sparse forest habitats and riverine corridors west (Turkey) and south (Iran) of the Caspian Sea and west through Central Asia into the Taklamakan desert of Xinjiang, China. The Caspian tiger is an extinct tiger subspecies with the last records in the wild dates back to early 1970s. The Caspian tiger is also classified as extinct by the IUCN.

The Javan tiger is an extinct tiger subspecies that used to be available on the Indonesian island of Java until the mid-1970s. Javan tigers were last positively recorded from Java's MeruBetiri National Park in 1976. They most possibly disappeared from much of the remaining part of the island - outside the park boundries - by the 1940s. It is estimated that only 20-25 Javan tigers remained on Java island by the mid-1950s. The Javan tiger is also classified as extinct by the IUCN.

A recent project by the WWF and IUCN plans to one day bring back tigers to the Caspian, beginning with Kazakhstan. "We think, it's a good idea to restore this legendary animal to the habitats where it lived only 50 or 60 years ago," says Mikhail Paltsyn, a doctoral candidate at the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Paltsyn is also a member of the WWF and IUCN and a researcher for the restoration programme.

Tarequl Islam Munna, a columnist and conservator of wildlife and environment,  is a correspondent of American International News Service.

munna_tareq@yahoo.com

Link:https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/views/views/saving-tiger-population-from-extinction-1532790994

From birth to ban: Beat plastic pollution

Daily Observer-Published : Sunday, 8 July, 2018

Tarequl Islam Munna

We all know that plastic has become ingrained in the consumerist lifestyle. A world without plastics, or synthetic organic polymers, seems unimaginable today. But the accumulation of plastic products has led to increasing amounts of plastic pollution around the world. As plastic is composed of major toxic pollutants, it has the potential to cause great harm to the human health, air, water, land pollution, impacts of climate on eco-system.

The first plastic patent was granted in 1841by Alexander Parkes. In 1855, Parkes patented the first man-made plastic. Parkes was first exhibited to the public at the 1862 London International Exhibition. Meanwhile American chemist John Wesley Hyatt also developed a man-made plastic, which he called Celluloid, and several patent infringement lawsuits between Parkes, Spill and Hyatt eventually resulted in a US judge declaring Parkes to be the inventor of the first man-made plastic, in 1870. The addition of camphor to nitrocellulose led to the first thermoplastic (a modified natural polymer) known as celluloid.

By 1900 this material was used for the movie industry. The first synthetic thermo-set polymer (a phenol-formaldehyde (PF)), known as Bakelite, was obtained in 1907 by Baekeland through the polycondensation of phenol with formaldehyde. Bakelite was commercialized in 1909-1910. According to Dorel Feldman, Polymer History (2008) and The Robinson Library (2017).

"Beat Plastic Pollution", the theme for World Environment Day 2018, is a call to action for all of us to come together to combat one of the great environmental challenges of our time. The global celebrations were created by the UN in 1972 as a way of raising environmental awareness and action. 

More than 300 million tons of plastic are manufactured every year. Humans have produced 8.3bn tons since the 1950s with the majority ending up in landfill or oceans. Scientist predicts more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050, according to the Guardian report (2017). Scientists estimate that there are at least 5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing nearly 270,000 tons floating in the oceans right now.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report, Europe (EU-28, Norway and Switzerland) is the world's second largest plastic producer after China. In 2016, it produced 60 million tonnes of plastic, generating 27 million tonnes of plastic waste. WWF is urging governments to adopt of a legally-binding international agreement to eliminate plastic discharge into the oceans, supported by strong national targets to achieve 100 per cent plastic waste recycled and reusable by 2030 and national bans on single-use plastic items such as bags.

Globally over 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into the world's ocean each year, more than half of them estimated come from the just five Asian countries -- China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam and Thailand, according to the UN Environment Program report. Up to 60 per cent of the plastic waste leaking into the ocean, according to a 2015 report by the environmental campaigner Ocean Conservancy and the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment.

Top 20 plastic pollutant countries in the world ranked annual metric tons by mass of mismanaged plastic waste in global water: 1) China - 27.2m, 2) Indonesia - 10.1m, 3) Philippines - 5.9m, 4) Vietnam - 5.8m, 5) Sri Lanka - 5.0m, 6) Thailand - 3.2m, 7) Egypt - 3.0m, 8) Malaysia - 2.9m, 9) Nigeria - 2.7m, 10) Bangladesh - 2.5m, 11) South Africa - 2.0m, 12) India - 1.9m, 13) Algeria - 1.6m, 14) Turkey - 1.5m, 15) Pakistan - 1.5m, 16) Brazil - 1.5m,  17) Burma - 1.4m, 18) Morocco - 1.0m, 19) North Korea - 1.0m, 20) United States - 0.9m. A recent report published by Earth Day Network (2018) ranked Bangladesh 10th out of the top 20 plastic polluting countries in the world.

Plastic shopping bags were first introduced into Bangladesh early 80s; on an average each family uses four plastic shopping bags in Dhaka residents every day. About 14 million are thrown to the garbage every day, often ending up in rivers and oceans and causing hazards to marine life. Since 1982 plastic is used in Bangladesh as a packaging and every corner of country is using plastic shopping bags for daily use. The demand is rising everyday and new factories are springing up like mushrooms.

According to Jashim Uddin, president of Bangladesh Plastic Goods Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BPGMEA) (2018) "Bangladesh imports more than 155,000 metric tons of raw plastic materials each year and the figure is growing continuously." "Today, we have around 5,000 small, medium and large plastic goods manufacturing units, while the number was around 3,000 units a couple of years back, approximately, 1.2 million people are engaged in this sector.

Bangladesh is the first country in the world to ban plastic shopping bags in January 1, 2002, made a voluntary commitment last year at the Ocean Conference in New York to significantly prevent and reduce marine pollution by 2025. Other countries begin to follow suit.

A research on plastic conducted by the Korean Institute of Health Research, said workers at plastic factories are more exposed to cancer, skin disease and other fatal health problems. Plastic-wrapped fish and meat generate a kind of heat that creates radiation which ultimately makes the food poisonous. These discarded plastic shopping bags have posed a new environmental threat for an overcrowded city which is already suffering from high levels of water and air pollution and other kinds of environmental hazards.

Drainage systems blocked by plastic bags have been identified as a major cause of flooding in Bangladesh during monsoon season. Bangladesh experienced floods in urban areas in1988, 1998 and 2008 where plastic and plastic materials were one of the major causes for the blockage of the drainage systems. In the year 1990, 9.3 million plastic bags were dumped in the city every day, with only 10-15 per cent put in dustbins. The rest goes into drainage and sewage lines, according to the 'World leader in banning the plastic bag'.

Around 73,000 tons of plastic waste ends up in the sea everyday through the rivers Padma, Jamuna and Meghna in Bangladesh. Besides domestic waste, there is waste from India, Nepal and China floating down the Ganges, Jamuna and Brahmaputra. According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) June 05, 2018.

Plastic remains intact in the soil, it causes problem for soil fertility which is a big concern in this food-producing country.  Bangladesh is losing one per cent of arable land every year, in part due to erratic rains and land degradation, according to the UN World Food Program. 

According to the UN report, we buy 1 million plastic bottles every minute. Every year, we use 17 million barrels of oil to produce plastic bottles for our water. Every year the world uses 500 billion plastic bags. In 2016, 480 billion drinking bottles were sold worldwide. 50 per cent of the plastic we use in single-use or disposable. Plastic makes up 10 per cent of all of the waste we generate. In the last decade, we produced more plastic than in the whole last century. 

To solving world's plastic pollution, the Netherlands could become the first country to made road surface with plastic bottles after Rotterdam city council said it was considering piloting a new type of road surface touted by its creators as a greener alternative to asphalt. By paving the roads with recycled plastics, we can help in solving our plastic waste epidemic. We can also reduce global carbon emissions at the same time!

United Kingdom begins testing roads made of recycled plastic waste through MR6 product. Conventional roads offer a lot of problems for the community. United Kingdom devised a product called MR6 that integrates recycled plastic and other wastes in making roads, according to Digital Trends, UK.

The region of Tamil Nadu, in southern India, has turned more than 1,600 tons of waste plastic into 620 miles of roads in the past five years, according to 'One Green Planet'  (June 21, 2017).

We can reduce the amount of plastic we use in our daily life by: 1) Recycling, 2) Banning single-use plastic bags,  3) Use reusable produce bags, 4) Use glass jar to freeze food, 5) Say no to disposable cutlery, 6) Avoid excessive food packaging, 7) Carry a reusable bottle. Managing waste plastic materials for road construction, we can also use recycled waste plastic to make Bangladesh's road surface with plastic waste. It was tested, environment friendly, more durable and 60 per cent tougher than standard asphalt.

The use of plastic is now not only creating health and environmental hazard in Bangladesh but also lost of 50,000 jobs that used to work in cottage industries that produced jute, plant leaf, paper and cotton bags (FEJB, March 2000). Jute Packaging Act, 2010 (53 no act of 2010) (amended by 38 no act of 2013), no one can packet, sale or deliver specific products without packaging without jute.

Implement plastic banning act, ban usage of polythene shopping bags, strict enforcement of existing laws and severely punish the violators of law, promote usage of jute goods as the alternate of plastic and aware people to use jute good. Moreover, high tax should be imposed on raw materials of plastic. At the same time we need to change our daily lifestyle relating to the use of plastics in our house, offices and workplaces, we should ban disposable the use of shopping bags, bottles, glasses, straws, cups, lunch box, spoons and packaging materials.

Without tougher environmental legislation, it will be very difficult for the government to attain any success in its fight against plastic. Managing plastic waste is increasingly becoming a global environmental and economic challenge. Plastic is not only a threat to human health but also impacts of climate on ecosystem as well as our present future generation.

Tarequl Islam Munna is Correspondent, American International News Service

Link: http://www.observerbd.com/details.php?id=146736

Global Warming and South Asia
As delegates were preparing to meet in Bali for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, there was a sobering reminder of the havoc global warming is already wreaking. Cyclone Sidr, accompanied by a tidal surge, killed 2,000 in Bangladesh initially, with fears that the death toll might eventually reach 10,000.

Simon Robinson notes that things could have been much worse; Cyclone Gorky, in 1991, killed 138,000. The Bangladeshi government has gotten much better at preparing for and cleaning up after such storms, but cyclones are likely to get harder to control. “Scientists believe that global warming will make cyclones in the region bigger and more frequent. That's bad news for Bangladesh, whose location and geography makes it not only particularly susceptible to the effects of climate change but also extremely hard to protect,” writes Robinson. (Time Asia, November 19, 2007).  

Chowdhury Sajjadul Karim, Bangladesh’s delegate to the Bali conference on climate change, said that low-lying low-income countries, especially Bangladesh, are the most susceptible to the effects of global warming and the least responsible for its occurrence. “We are on a high moral ground because our per capita emission of [greenhouse gases] is very low... So they owe us compensation as we are the prime victims of a crime we had no part in.” (The New Age, November 18, 2007).

Karim certainly has a case. Tarequl Islam Munna writes, “Of the ‘Top 10’ most exposed coastal cities in 2070, nine are in Asia.” They are: Kolkata, Mumbai, Dhaka, Guangzhou, Ho Chi Minh City, Shanghai, Bangkok, Rangoon, Miami and Haiphong (Vietnam). (The New Age, December 9, 2007).

But though rich countries have done most of the carbon-emitting so far, poor countries are likely to do most of it in the future. Addressing that issue is tricky. The 2007 United Nations Development Program report on climate change recommends that developing countries cut their carbon emissions 20 percent by 2050, a task which the report estimates could cost 1.6 percent GDP growth per year. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia finds that cost unacceptably high, and demands that the report’s benchmarks be changed to per capita figures, a move that would make the job of cutting carbon much easier for quickly-growing India. (The Business Standard, November 28, 2007).

And Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed a willingness to fight global warming, so long as India’s economic development is not compromised. “We need to find a solution that does not perpetuate poverty,” he said. (Outlook India,November 30, 2007).  

Other commentators, however, see the environmental consequences of climate change as themselves a hindrance to development. Supriya Bezbaruah notes of the dire predictions of climatologists; if carbon emissions were to remain unchecked, we would see “seas rising and submerging half of Bangladesh. Glaciers would melt, leading first to floods and then droughts as rivers run dry. There would be more dengue, more malaria, more diarrhea.” India “simply cannot afford” the dirty development model followed by the world’s rich countries. (The Hindustan Times, December 9, 2007).

Much of the debate over who should pay for global warming has focused on the carbon debt owed by the developed world to the developing. But, asks C.E. Karunakaran, “What carbon debt does the burgeoning middle class — the Germany within India — owe to the rural poor and how will it discharge it?” India “can no longer afford to maintain its present laid-back attitude.” (The Hindu, December 3, 2007).

Poor hit hardest by climate change

Tarequl Islam Munna
The New Nation
Sun, 04 May 2008 07:24 UTC

The devastating effects of natural disasters caused by climate change is hitting the poorest the hardest, a new report reveals. Of the 443,000 people killed and 2.5 billion affected by weather-related incidents in the last 10 years more than 98 per cent of them came from developing countries.

The figures are revealed in a new report Climate of Disaster issued by the Tearfund, one of the leading relief and development agencies. Tearfund is calling on governments to commit $50bn per year to help some of the world's most vulnerable communities prepare for the destructive events such as floods and droughts brought by climate change.

Cyclone Sidr which last year struck Bangladesh hitting millions of people is the latest of more than 1,400 natural disasters in the last five years. The report says that based on past experience, Bangladesh is going to continue to be one of the worst-hit places on the planet.

Issued as the climate change conference takes place in Bali, the report says: "With climate change increasing the number and intensity of extreme events such as floods and droughts, more and more people are becoming vulnerable to a range of environmental disasters.

Without urgent action, this trend is set to rise, leading to unprecedented levels of suffering and deaths. Poor people will be hit hardest- they are the least able to cope, and live in the most vulnerable areas of the world. "With each new disaster, precious gains made in poverty eradication are swept away." Tearfund's Advocacy Director, Andy Atkins, said: "It is time for the international community to take stronger action to support vulnerable communities' efforts to reduce the risk of disaster.

"Airlifting stranded people from floodwaters and sending food packages to those affected by drought can no longer be our sole response to weather-related disasters.

"As a global community we have a moral responsibility to invest our aid money upfront in helping the planet's poorest people prepare for predictable disaster. If we do not, then many thousands of lives will be needlessly lost and billions of pounds of aid money will not be used to best effect."

He said it was " indefensible and illogical" not to help communities prepare for disasters when it was known which areas of the world were the most vulnerable and where sometimes whole villages could be saved by even the simplest of techniques.

"But governments are wedded to emergency responses and remain obstinately slow to invest in reducing people's vulnerability to disasters.

"https://www.sott.net/article/155743-Poor-hit-hardest-by-climate-change

Who is responsible for health of present and future generation?

The Daily Sun

Opinion Page 

Published:11 February, 2018

Food is essential for every living being on earth. But food adulteration has become so rampant in Bangladesh that we always feel scared while eating anything. Contamination and adulteration of food products has become a major threat for public health in Bangladesh. Dangers lurk in every food item. It is very difficult to find a sector of food industry which is free from adulteration. From vegetables, fish, milk, fruit, sweetmeats, ice cream, to spices, nothing is safe. Almost every day different TV channels and news papers are reporting on new methods of adulterating new types of foods. Carbide, formalin, textile colours, artificial sweeteners, DDT, urea etc are used widely for this purpose. Contamination of foods with toxic chemicals poses a serious threat to public health, especially in a country like Bangladesh where level of awareness is very low due to poor health literacy. In the long run, these chemicals in food adversely affect vital organs such as the liver and kidney, resulting in organ failure and/or cancer and thus, untimely loss of life. Ironically, people from all walks of life are aware of the hazards of taking foods adulterated with toxic chemicals, but this knowledge is not translated into practice. In a recent study, it has been found that though people are aware about the health hazards, they are nevertheless buying and consuming these adulterated foods. Several explanations are made for this paradox; absence or unavailability of non-adulterated food, failure of the regulatory agency to test and screen out adulterated food, adulterated foods are attractive in appearance and costs less, cultural factors and food habits etc. According to estimates of WHO (World Health Organisation), food borne and waterborne diarrhoeal diseases kill approximately 2.2 million people worldwide annually. A majority of them, approximately 1.9 million of them are children. But due to the lax monitoring system in Bangladesh, a reliable assessment of public health impact due to food contamination is unavailable. ICDDR,B, an international health research organisation in Dhaka, has some data available, which show that about 501 patients visit hospitals per day for treatment of diarrhoea that were attributed to food and waterborne causes. A common scenario regarding food contamination reveals nonconformity with sanitary practices in food handling among both producers and retailers, particularly street food vendors. Meanwhile, the environmental group Paribesh Bachao Andolan (PABA) disclosed horrific findings on the use of formalin, after collecting 263 samples of fruit and traditional iftar items from different parts in Dhaka. The group found 100 % of vermicelli and citrus fruit, 95% of grapes, 91% of bananas and 90% of noodles were contaminated with formalin and other harmful chemical preservatives, as well as 82% of mangoes, 77% of dates, 75% of tomatoes, 60% of eggplant, 59% of apples and 20% of cucumbers. According to the Ministry of Law there are 15 safe food delivery laws and regulations to contain adulteration of food in Bangladesh such as: Penal Code, 1860, Control of Essential Commodities Act, 1956, Food (Special Courts) Act, 1956, Pure Food Ordinance, 1959, Cantonments Pure Food Act, 1966, Pesticide Ordinance, 1971, Special Powers Act, 1974, Fish and Fish Products (Inspection and Control), Ordinance, 1983, The Breast-Milk Substitutes (Regulation of Marketing) Ordinance, 1984, Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution Ordinance 1985, Iodine Deficiency Disorders Prevention Act 1989, Vokta Odhikar Songrokkhon Ain, 2009 [Consumers Rights Protection Act 2009], Sthanio Sarkar (City Corporation) Ain, 2009 [Local Government (City Corporation) Act 2009], Sthanio Sarkar (Paurashava) Ain, 2009 [Local Government (Paurashava) Act, 2009] Mobile Court Ain, 2009 [Mobile Court Act, 2009]. Use of such a large number of laws for a single purpose like food safety is quite unusual and unprecedented in the world. When it comes to challenges faced by the authority for ensuring food safety, S M Amirul Islam, Director, BFSA said: “Our large population and diversified food habits pose a challenge for us as we are short-handed. We have about 2.5 million food business operators but not enough officers to conduct drives diligently in all the places. There are 20 departments under 12 ministries that are involved in food safety management and we are trying to synchronise their activities and support them in areas where they are lacking; we also help them identify the gaps in existing systems and work out a solution. We need more labs for testing food items for contamination, we are lacking in that department. We have no reference lab. People have a wrong perception and in many cases, they are being misled about food safety in this country. Unhygienic food habits and conditions in our supply chain are also a concern for us. We are hopeful that we will be able to build a synchronised management system with all the stakeholders in the near future to effectively assess and ensure food safety in Bangladesh.” Commitment from the political establishment is needed for a sustained campaign against the perpetrators of this heinous crime and to establish our fundamental right to have safe and nutritious food! To achieve this, relentless enforcement of existing laws with the execution of highest penalty possible, awareness-building campaign among consumers, promotion of ethical practices among the business community with active involvement of the business leaders, and capacity development of public health labs to test food items for adulteration on the spot are needed. The consumer rights groups should be more vocal and play active role in developing a mass campaign in the country. All citizens need to continue their activism so that the government becomes really sincere in saving the future of this nation. Otherwise, we’ll have a very sick nation.   

Tarequl Islam Munna: Journalist, Columnist and Conservator, wildlife and environment. E-mail: munna_tareq@yahoo.com

Ghana environmentalists see local cause of climate change

https://www.thedailystar.net/news-detail-53440

The latest round of United Nations climate change negotiations took place in Accra, Ghana, from 21-27 August. The Accra Climate Change Talks took forward work on a strengthened and effective international climate change deal under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, as well as work on emission reduction rules and tools under the Kyoto Protocol. This is part of a negotiating process that will be concluded in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. Over 1600 participants attended the Accra meeting, which was the third major UNFCCC gathering this year.
Delegates at the U.N. climate change conference in Accra hoped to move a step closer this week towards an agreement to replace the dated Kyoto accord. Even as they worked, environmental activists in Ghana say the country is already feeling the effects of global warming.
Flooding, drought, and persistent bushfires are some of the results felt in recent years in Ghana from the change in global climate, says Agustus Asamoah, research manager at the Ghana Wildlife Society.
"Ghana being a tropical country, the effect of climate change can be twofold," he said. "It can result in prolonged droughts and erratic rainfall patterns, in which case there can be years of too much rain, too much rain than expected, or less than expected in certain parts of the country. As happened in the northern part of the country last year, we had so much rain, and flooding that had not been experienced in decades."
Asamoah says precise studies have not been carried out to link climate change to decreases in wildlife in Ghana, but his research shows a correlation between fluctuating coastal water levels associated with unusual levels of rainfall, and a recent decrease in migratory bird populations.
Other Ghanaian environmentalists fear that Ghana is not only a victim of global warming, but also contributing to the problem through excessive harvesting of its once vast tropical forest. Ghana is losing its forests more quickly than they can be replaced, says George Ahadzie, director of the Accra-based Green Earth Organization.
"The problem with deforestation is largely to blame on the government," he said. "That is, the government is not committed to some of the basic rules that it, itself has put in place to regulate or to ensure that forest is conserved. One is the issue that the government is not able to control what we call the annual allocation of companies in timber processing. So because government cannot monitor, people are always cutting beyond what we call the annual allowable cut." Ghana forests are being cut at a rate of nearly two percent annually. Only one quarter of the original forest remains.
Developing countries like Ghana are home to the vast majority of the world's remaining tropical forests. Those forests play a central role in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, helping to alleviate global warming, and making the avoidance of further deforestation a principal goal of environmental policy makers worldwide.

Tarequl Islam Munna is a wildlife and environment conservator associated with World Wildlife Fund (WWF), E-mail: munna_tareq@yahoo.com

World's big cat population

Tarequl Islam Munna

Posted : 29 Jul, 2017 

Tigers are the world's largest cat species and currently listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). In the last 80 years, three of the nine subspecies of tiger went extinct and the future of the other six remains uncertain. The primary threats facing tigers are habitat loss, depletion of prey species and poaching.The number of tigers in the world has risen for the first time in 100 years. Around 100,000 tigers lived in the wild in 1900. 97 per cent of them were lost in a century of constant decline. But their number is finally on the rise despite the poaching and loss of habitat. For the first time in a century, the global wild tiger population has increased after many decades of decline. There are now minimum 3,890 tigers in the wild, representing a substantial increase since 2010, when estimates put the global population at as few as 3,200, according to the (IUCN).The conservation successes can be attributed to multiple factors, including an increase in tiger population in India, Russia, Nepal, Bhutan, improved surveys and enhanced protection, when countries announced a historic commitment to double the population (Tx2) by 2022. Countries appear to be heading toward their goal, and this is the first time tiger numbers have been increasing globally in more than a hundred years."A strong action plan for the next six years is vital," said Michael Baltzer, Leader of WWF Tx2 Tiger Initiative. "The global decline has been halted but there is still no safe place for tigers. Southeast Asia, in particular, is at an imminent risk of losing its tigers if these governments do not take action immediately."The world's count of wild tigers roaming forests from Russia to Vietnam has gone up for the first time in more than a century, with some 3,890 counted by conservation groups and national governments in the latest global census.This is the first time tiger counts have been increasing since 1900, when there were more than 100,000 tigers in the wild. "More important than the absolute numbers is the trend, and we're seeing the trend going in the right direction," said Ginette Hemley, senior vice president of wildlife conservation at the WWF.Tigers are considered endangered species, under constant threat from habitat loss and poachers seeking their body parts for sale on the black market. They are also seeing their habitats rapidly shrinking as countries develop.The global tiger count is based on data from 2014. Here is the tally given country-wise: Bangladesh 106; Bhutan 103; Cambodia 0; China more than 7; India 2,226; Indonesia 371; Laos 2; Malaysia 250; Nepal 198; Russia 433; Thailand 189; and Vietnam fewer than 5. Experts say Myanmar government's count of 85 tigers in 2010 was not included in the list because the data were considered out of date.Statistics from TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, show that minimum 1,590 tigers were seized by law enforcement officials between January 2000 and April 2014, feeding a multi-billion dollar illegal wildlife trade.The tiger population in Bangladesh's part of the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest, sharply declined to 106 in 2015 from 440 in 2004, confirms a top forest official quoting the tiger census 2015. The survey by Bangladesh's forest department, with technical support from the Wildlife Institute of India, titled 'Tiger Abundance in Bangladesh Sundarbans' said there were only 106 tigers in Bangladesh's part. Some 440 tigers were recorded during the previous census conducted in 2004 in the World Heritage-listed Sundarbans, one of the world's last remaining habitats for the big cats.Bengal tigers live mainly in India where nationwide there are 2,226, with smaller populations in Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, China and Myanmar. India is home to 70 per cent of global tiger population. Therefore, the country has an important role to play in tiger conservation. The Government of India started its 'Project Tiger' in 1972 with a view to conserving the animal. As part of this project nine core buffer areas for maintaining tiger population were notified.Established in 1994, the Global Tiger Forum is the only inter-governmental body for tiger conservation. Its membership includes seven tiger range countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal and Vietnam.Now the responsibility of both Bangladeshi and Indian authorities might be to analyse the environmental impact of the population loss of a species like the Royal Bengal Tiger and devise proper ways to conserve them.

E-mail: munna_tareq@yahoo.com