Green organisations call to cancel lease of forestland in Cox’s Bazar

Twenty green organisations, based in Cox's Bazar, urged the government to cancel the lease of 700 acres of protected forestland in the area.

They made this call from a human chain organised in front of Cox's Bazar District Administration today.

Fazlul Kader Chowdhury, president of Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon's Cox's Bazar unit, said the Land Ministry set a precedence of breaking the law meant to protect the forest land.

"In 1990, in a circular, the ministry said hills and its slopes would be protected for forestation, and those land would be non-leasable. But the ministry violated its circular, leasing out hills and forests to the public service administration to build an admin academy," he said.

He said the ministry falsified the status of the forest showing it as "khas land" to facilitate the lease.

Ibrahim Khalil Mamun, chief executive of Youth Environment Society, said the site was declared an ecologically critical area in 1997.

"Bangladesh currently has two such academies and a huge amount of plain land to build another. But they chose to devastate the forest and its biodiversity", he said.

Representatives from BELA, Youthnet for Climate Justice, Save The Nature, Team Eleven, Cox's Bazar Paribesh Sangbadik Forum, Platform for 12 social organizations, and YES also spoke in the programme.