Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Saber Hossain Chowdhury has said that cutting down a forest in one place and planting trees in another does not make things equal. There is now no scope to harm the environment by using influence; what happens now will be in the national interest, he said.

The minister was speaking at a day-long seminar titled "National Resource Accounts under UN System of Environmental Economic Accounting", jointly organised by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The seminar was held on Thursday (18 April) at the BBS auditorium. State Minister for Planning Md Shahiduzzaman Sarkar and FAO's representative in Bangladesh, Jiaqun Shi, were present as special guests. Dr Shahnaz Arefin, secretary of the Statistics and Informatics Division, chaired the event.

The minister said many plans are made but we stumble in implementing them. Many of us say development and the environment are at odds, but now we talk about sustainable development, and a sustainable approach has arrived. The biggest war ahead is with nature, and no one can survive long fighting nature, he said.

Saying that traditional brick burning threatens the environment and food security, Saber Hossain Chowdhury said: "We will take action against brick kilns. Because bricks are made by the traditional method, 13 crore tonnes of soil a year are being used in bricks. This is harming the environment and having a negative impact on the environment and food. Forests are being cleared and farmland damaged."

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