Salvaging Dhaka
July 24, 2011
Md. Mahbubul Huq for The Daily Star
The engine behind a city is, apparently, its mayor. He is the chief of local government administration. Local government administration is responsible for providing services such as: fire safety, police protection, any emergency services, public school, water and sewerage, city planning, maintaining local environmental health, garbage collection, public transportation. Other services provided include: recording births, deaths and marriages; managing public burial sites, public parks, open spaces and other public land.
Local government functions Read more
Evaluating services of Sundarbans
July 4, 2011
Muhammad Selim Hossain and Mohammed Abdul Baten for The Daily Star
Forest is a bounteous gift of nature that provides the basis of life and livelihood for humans. According to human history, hunting and gathering, the first and foremost livelihood of homo sapiens, was forest based. Interestingly, mangrove is the most diverse forest and is maximum service provider of all the forest types. Today, it is man whose relentless activities are, however, at the root of eroding this invaluable biological capital of nature.
Forest management has also seen a long chronological development Read more
Growth at the cost of environment?
July 4, 2011
Industrial Pollution
Growth at the cost of environment?
Md Koushik Ahmed for The Daily Star
The “primitive accumulation” nature of developed countries to use all natural resources as inputs into a human devised system in the never ending quest for economic growth has led us to ask “what the future holds for us”. This growth oriented development strategy has resulted in industrial pollution all over the world. The rise of synthetic chemicals, most of which did not exist 75 years ago and their exposures which came from some of the 11,700 products made by 164 manufactures that contain these chemicals, have alarmingly increased Read more
‘Shocking’ state of oceans threatens mass extinction
June 22, 2011
Overfishing and pollution putting fish, sharks and whales in extreme danger – with extinction ‘inevitable’, study finds.
Fish, sharks, whales and other marine species are in imminent danger of an “unprecedented” and catastrophic extinction event at the hands of humankind, and are disappearing at a far faster rate than anyone had predicted, a study of the world’s oceans has found.
Mass extinction of species will be “inevitable” if current trends continue, researchers said.
Overfishing, pollution, run-off of fertilisers from farming and the acidification of the seas caused by increasing carbon dioxide emissions were combining to put marine creatures in Read more
Honey collection and biodiversity loss in mangrove ecosystem
June 17, 2011
Dr. M.A. Bashar for The Independent
In Sundarbans ecosystem, honey and wax production is a major seasonal activity employing some 2000 honey collectors known as ‘mowallis’ and producing about 200 tonnes of honey and about 50 tonnes of bee wax which constitutes about 50 per cent of the total production in Bangladesh. So far information is concerned, it is to be noted that no country in the world has got even 50 percent of its national honey production coming from natural system. Apiculture or colonisation of bees made by men provides the honey production in other countries of world. But only Bangladesh has Read more
Forest: The one and only address of inhabitable world
June 10, 2011
Dr. Md. Mizanur Rahman for The Daily Star
Forest ecosystem provides benefits that support the livelihoods of countless human beings. Forests provide a number of components to the broad range of ecological services such as, regulation of rainfall and hydrological system; maintenance of soil quality, control of soil erosion, modulating climate; and being the habitat of biodiversity. Forests form the basis of different industries e.g. timber, wood processing, paper, rubber, paints, resin, gum, honey, food, medicines, building material, fodder, game, tourism, etc. Forests are home to millions of people all around the world and Read more
Impact on environment and health
April 24, 2011
Shipbreaking in South Asia
Impact on environment and health
Md. Abu Sayed
Shipbreaking, referred to as ship recycling, is a type of ship disposal involving the dismantling of an obsolete vessel’s structure for scrapping or disposal. It includes a wide range of activities, from removing all gears and equipment to cutting down the ship’s infrastructure.
Every year, about 600 end-of-life ships containing large amounts of toxic and hazardous substances and materials, and fuels, are sent to the beaches of South Asia, where they are dismantled. According to recent figures, 96 per cent of world’s GT ships were dismantled in Read more
Climate change and neglected tropical diseases
April 24, 2011
Khalid Md. Bahauddin
Recent investigations attribute more than 150,000 deaths per year and a global disease burden to climate change. An area that has received particular attention is the potential impact of global warming on shifts in the spatio-temporal distribution of disease vectors, and hence the frequency and transmission dynamics of vector-borne diseases. Vectors, pathogens (parasites), and hosts survive and reproduce within certain optimal climatic conditions. Changes in climate will alter the transmission of vector-borne diseases in different ways, such as changing the Read more
Climatic hazards: Vulnerability and adaptation
April 9, 2011
Dr Moazzem Hossain
It is now widely recognised that the coastal regions of the world would suffer severely both in economic and social fronts from the direct impact of global warming and rising sea level. It has been noticed that in recent years sea-level rise, frequent storms and cyclones, and riverbank erosion have taken a serious turn in the coastal regions of the Bay of Bengal. These necessitate checking up vulnerability of the coastal people. In particular, investigation on the livelihood in terms of socio-economic vulnerability (risk) of the coastal population is of paramount importance. Two Read more
‘Climate change reshapes tropical forests’
February 21, 2011
bbc.co.uk
Future climate change could change the profile of tropical forests, with possible consequences for carbon storage and biodiversity, a study says.
It suggests that if current trends continued, the drier conditions would favour deciduous, canopy species at the expense of other trees.
US researchers based their findings on the changes they recorded in a Costa Rican forest over a 20-year period.
The team’s paper has been published in the journal Global Change Biology.
“It is important because – depending on Read more
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