The Department of Environment has identified 24 resorts built inside the ecologically critical area (ECA) around the Sundarbans in Khulna, Bagerhat and Satkhira without any environmental clearance or final approval. On 4 October Md Harun-Or-Rashid, assistant director of the department's Khulna district office, ordered the owners in writing to close the resorts and remove the structures within 30 days. Bangla Tribune's Khulna correspondent Hedayet Hossain looked into how they came to be built.
Eighteen of the resorts are in Khulna's Dacope (Dhangmari, Kailashganj and Banishanta), four in Satkhira and two in Mongla, Bagerhat. Commercial resorts began in 2009, when the NGO Shushilan built Tiger Point at Munshiganj in Satkhira to house forest workers, donor representatives and researchers. In 2015 ten resorts were built in Dacope with donor help; all but Golkanon have closed, but many new ones have appeared in the past three or four years. Owners say the resorts stand outside the forest boundary on private land, and with no master plan everyone built as they saw fit.
Many owners later applied for environmental clearance, but all applications were rejected on 30 September for lack of valid papers. Jubair Hira, owner of the Irabati and Bonomali resorts and organising secretary of the resort owners' association, said they started with union parishad trade licences, paid Tk 58,000 to apply for district administration approval and pay about Tk 20,000 a month in VAT. The fire service told them it cannot license such areas, and the environment department said there is no provision for clearance in an ECA. If Mongla EPZ and the Rampal power plant inside the 10-kilometre ECA could get clearance, he asked, why not the resorts?
By his account Irabati cost about Tk 1.25 crore over four years and the less-than-a-year-old Bonomali the same, with some resorts costing Tk 2 to 3 crore. Each employs 20 to 25 local people, shops have sprung up nearby, and people who depended on the forest now have other income, he said.
"No resort can operate in an ecologically critical area," said Khondaker Md Fazlul Haque, director of the department's Khulna divisional office. "The closure order was issued because the owners did not reply satisfactorily to our notices. If they do not close, we will close them ourselves." Somen Moitra, assistant director in Satkhira, said quick legal action would be taken against that district's four resorts through executive magistrates and mobile courts.
A J D M Hasanur Rahman, divisional forest officer of the Sundarbans West Forest Division, said the forest department's legal power to evict is limited because the resorts are on private land just outside its boundary. But uncontrolled tourist entry into the forest, loud sound systems, bright lights all night and dumped plastic and harmful waste from these resorts pose a severe threat to the Sundarbans' wildlife and ecosystem, so closing them is urgent, he said. Environment and forest experts say uncontrolled tourism, noise, light and poor waste management harm wildlife, raising the question of a joint policy that weighs protecting the forest against the local economy.
Photo: David M. / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Source: Bangla Tribune
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