Green, clean S Asia underscored

On the first day, the Saarc Technical Committee on Environment and Forestry (STCEF) held their meeting discussing several points of agenda on environment and forestry to prepare a report for the seventh ministerial meeting to be held on May 24.

The minister-level meeting, which is expected to strike a deal, will be preceded with a meeting of senior officials today.

Environment and Forest Minister Tariqul Islam attended the meeting as chief guest. State Minister Zafrul Islam Chowdhury was the special guest with Zafar Ahmad Chowdhury, Environment and Forest secretary, in the chair held at Sonargaon Hotel.

"I hope, among various measures, the technical experts will move forward to consider the modalities for having a Regional Environment Treaty in furthering environmental cooperation among the Saarc states as envisaged in the 13th Saarc Summit," Tariqul Islam said in his speech.

He said that there is a vast scope for regional cooperation in various fields of environment, particularly in disaster management, coastal zone management, arsenic contamination of groundwater, water conservation, green South Asia and sharing trans-boundary flows of water.

“We had the directions from our leaders during the 13th Saarc summit that we need to coordinate our activities in various areas of disaster management, such as early warning, exchange of information, training and sharing of experiences and best practices in emergency relief efforts”, Tariqul told the experts.

Zafrul said that a number of environmental initiatives have already been taken under the Saarc process and in some cases progresses have been made.

“Now we need furthering of our initiatives. We have to move forward to achieve a green and clean South Asia,” he said.

On the sidelines of the technical meeting, Secretary Zafar said Bangladesh would place a package proposal for building a 'Green South Asia', free from environmental pollution, in the meeting.

The proposals include taking green city programme, establishing networks to regulate the restricted areas, arranging coordinated regional water-shade management, cleaning up the rivers and setting up an extensive infrastructure on natural calamity management and prevention.

He said the technical committee meeting dealt with the environmental issues envisaged in the 'Dhaka Declaration' of the 13th Saarc Summit.

Major points in the Dhaka declaration was the formulation of a complete outline for early-warning and disaster-management project and strengthening the Saarc Meteorological Research Centre and Saarc Coastal Zone Management Centre.

It also includes announcing the year 2007 as 'Green South Asia' and discussion on formulating a regional environment treaty to enhance the environment-related cooperation among the Saarc countries.

Delegates from all the member countries, including current chairperson of the technical committee Dasho Sangay Thinley from Bhutan, were present at the meeting.