Budget ignoring environmental concerns?
It's quite disheartening to know that in the national budget for fiscal year 2021-22, only Tk 1,221 crore has been allocated for the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, according to a DS report published yesterday. This includes allocation for climate protection which is Tk 379.21 crore. Both of these allocations are less than what was allocated by the government in last year's budget. We don't understand why, when we are struggling with so many environmental challenges including climate change, the budget allocation, instead of being more than last year's, is actually less.
In fact, while announcing the national budget in the parliament, our finance minister said very little about environment. He just mentioned that a total of 16 round-the-clock air monitoring centres are being set up across the country that will store information and analyse them to determine the air quality. We all know that it is important to have a clear idea about the air condition, but the thing that the minister didn't mention was what will happen after the analysis. What steps will be taken if the air quality is bad? Besides, the minister talked only about air pollution but left out other crucial issues such as scarcity and degradation of water, loss of biodiversity, forests, fisheries, encroachment of rivers and other water bodies, introduction of renewable energy, protection of the Sundarbans and so on. This silence on the part of the finance minister gives the impression that saving the environment isn't on the priority list of the government right now.
It's not that the government has done nothing over the years to save the environment. While establishing Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund, it has also adopted the National Adaptation Program of Action (NAPA, 2005) under the requirement of United Nations Framework Convention on The Climate Change (UNFCC, 1992). The government has also created the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategic Action Plan (BCCSAP) in 2009, the Disaster Management Act 2010 etc. But, without adequate amount of money, these government initiatives won't be able to realise their goals.
As the national budget has just been proposed and not yet been put into action, we strongly urge the government to review its budget allocations and increase the amount to a large extent for the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change. Doing so will enable this government body to take emergency steps to prevent further degradation of the environment. Of course, close monitoring and accountability of how the funds are spent must be part of the government's plans also.
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