BAPA and trees
Bangladesh Paribesh Andolan (BAPA) has been one of the active environmental stewards of our country for the past several years. It has successfully highlighted many of the environmental concerns in Bangladesh and, in some cases, succeeded in waking up the authorities to take action against environmental degradation. BAPA surely deserves high points for those efforts. In recent months, however, we read in newspapers and watched on TV that BAPA had been agitating against the cutting down of trees along the Airport Road for widening and easing traffic congestion. I was stunned to see such a negative attitude of BAPA--which virtually wanted to stop this development work on Dhaka roads. Trees are a renewable resource; hence, after the completion of any development work anywhere, new trees could be planted in a panned manner, and indeed, this is done in all parts of the world. BAPA said that road widening could have been done 'without' cutting the trees if it were done in a 'planned' way. However, they never spelled out what was their 'planned' way, though. I understand that some arm-chair urban planners hold high positions in BAPA executive committee. On the other hand, BAPA was completely silent when hundreds of trees were cut down in Kansat by the agitators to block the traffic on Sona Masjid Road, which caused damage of perishable commodities in trucks. To them, tree cutting for any development work by the government is 'environmental degradation', while tree cutting by agitators is sacrosanct and should not be criticised. BAPA, through their double standards on environment, has clearly demonstrated that their concern for environment is neither genuine nor impartial.
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