Environment accounting in the works
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and UNDP are jointly working on Environmental-Economic Accounting (EEA) across the country, according to the contents of a parliamentary body session yesterday.
EEA is a framework for organising statistical information to help decision-makers better understand how the economy and the environment interact. By bringing together environmental and economic information it is possible to observe and quantify the contribution the natural environment makes to the economy.
This work, which will be the first of its kind in Bangladesh, will assess the monetary valuation of all forest land, wetland, forest, hills and bio-diversities.
"The valuation will be added with the country's total gross domestic product and we are expecting to get the primary statistics by July next year," Saber Hossain Chowdhury, a ruling Awami League MP and chief of the parliamentary watchdog, told The Daily Star as he emerged from the meeting at the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban.
Meanwhile, at the meeting yesterday, the department of environment (DoE) placed a list of 166 hotels, motels and resorts that were built illegally at Saint Martin Island, which was declared an Ecologically Critical Area (ECA) in 1999.
The parliamentary watchdog was surprised to know that some of the hotels and motels were established in 2005 but no one from the government's respective departments and the ministry itself bothered to take action against the illegal structures on an ECA.
Besides, neither of the 166 hotels and motels took the environmental clearance certificate, DoE officials present at the meeting said.
The parliamentary body has asked the ministry to serve show-cause notice to the officials of the respective department over their inaction on the matter, Chowdhury said.
The ministry has been asked to place detailed identities of the owners of the hotels and motels to identify who is behind the structures and take action against them.
"Mere fines to the owners of those hotels and motels are not enough. We have asked the authorities concerned to send them to jail as per the law," Chowdhury said.
The parliamentary body also asked the ministry to take measures against any illegal transfer, promotion posting and recruitment through nepotism, bribe or political influences.
Environment Minister Shahab Uddin, Deputy Minister Habibun Nahar, lawmakers Nazim Uddin Ahmed and Khodeja Nasreen Akhtar Hossain attended the meeting among others.
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