Trees are the most essential bounties of Nature contributing to the sustenance of life on earth. To the industrialised countries trees are a treasure trove of biodiversity and Greenhouse gas sinks that absorb carbon dioxide and thus keep global warming in check. To the developing nations these trees, so to say, are resources ripe for exploitation: potential farmland, a free source of fuel and a storehouse of exotic kinds of woods that command high prices in the domestic as well overseas markets. And these forests and plantations must be continued to maintain ecological balance of the planet earth. Without any contradiction, the world needs a lot of them to store the carbon produced by the growing population that thrives on industrialisation. Forests work as carbon dumps: trees extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, emit oxygen and store carbon in the trunks, roots and leaves. These utilities call for preserving the forests that are still there after massive logging by human beings and restoring those that have been destroyed. Not surprisingly, in Bangladesh trees are being destroyed in the old fashioned way. They are cut down for fuel, in the houses and brickfields and to meet the growing needs of croplands for the burgeoning population.
But other than this type of extinction, there is another deadly culprit at work, that is, plundering of the Sunderbans, forests in Cox's bazaar, Sylhet and in northern parts of Bangladesh, much beyond our knowledge. The disease called "the dying forest syndrome" which in the Sunderbans in Bangladesh is known as "top dying disease" strikes selectively but with deadly effect.
To preserve the environment, whether it is wetlands or forests in any part of the world, more so in Bangladesh, there must be an acceptable and rising level of economic well being for the humans who live in and around it.
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