Bangladesh will carry out afforestation on 1 lakh 92 thousand (192,000) hectares of land by 2025, Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Md Shahab Uddin has said. Of this, about 52,000 hectares will be developed as mangrove plantation, and 140,000 hectares of hill and sal forest will be reforested.

The minister said this on Monday (16 May) as chief guest at parallel session 2 of the second national conference reviewing progress on implementing the SDGs over the past six years, held at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre. The conference was organised by the General Economics Division of the Planning Commission and the Governance Innovation Unit of the Prime Minister's Office.

He said about 31,000 hectares of block plantation and about 24,000 hectares of mangrove plantation were carried out between 2016 and 2020. To reach the target of 16 per cent forest cover by 2030, forest management work involving poor and forest-dependent people is under way through afforestation, reforestation, restoration, and biodiversity conservation and cooperation. At the recent COP26, Bangladesh, like 141 other countries, signed the Glasgow declaration to halt deforestation and increase forestation.

The minister said the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has in the recent past actively implemented various activities and policy measures to tackle the environmental problems of global pressure on ecosystems, biodiversity, climate change and land degradation. Recent developments in the ministry's legal framework will help achieve SDG targets 11, 13, 14 and 15.

Shahab Uddin said: "We have prepared a national action plan to reduce pollution. In addition, 4.2 million improved cooking stoves have been installed in 64 districts to reduce indoor air pollution."

He said three dolphin sanctuaries and one wildlife sanctuary were declared in 2020 to meet the SDG targets, and a national park and a marine protected area were declared in 2021. "We have taken up extensive development work to conserve important land," he said.

State Minister for Water Resources Zahid Faruk attended as special guest, and Mustafa K Mujeri, executive director of the Institute for Inclusive Finance and Development, took part as a discussant.

The session was moderated by Planning Division Secretary Pradip Ranjan Chakraborty. Speakers included Senior Secretary of the Ministry of Water Resources Kabir Bin Anwar, Secretary of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief Md Kamrul Hasan, Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Md Mizanul Haque Chowdhury and Joint Secretary Zakia Afroz.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.