Reporting from Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is a land of extremes. Home to an estimated 140-plus million people, it is among the most overpopulated and impoverished countries in the world. Its climate produces flooding in the monsoon season and severe droughts in the dry season. Bangladesh is also home to many species of wildlife that are on the verge of extinction. Few countries bespeak such a precarious balance between humans and the natural environment, and despite measures taken by the Bangladeshi government in recent years, the natural resource base continues to deteriorate, concludes the Bangladesh State of the Environment report.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) began preparing this and other national and regional State of the Environment reports in 1999, in response to recommendations issued in Agenda 21, an international plan of action that was reaffirmed most recently at Earth Summit 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Produced by the Bangladeshi Department of Environment and the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS), with financial support from UNEP, the report is the most comprehensive environmental checkup to date for this poverty-stricken nation.

"[D]egradation of the natural resource base and of the environment in Bangladesh started with various human and economic development activities, before adequate mitigation measures were considered an integral part of the development process," the report states. "The major thrust of government policy remains towards poverty alleviation through employment generation and economic growth, and little has been achieved in integrating environmental protection."

Five key environmental issues are identified as crucial to the future sustainability of Bangladesh: land degradation, water pollution and scarcity, air pollution, biodiversity loss, and the threat of natural disasters. Recognizing the interrelationships of these issues led the report's authors to adopt a holistic perspective.

Mozaharul Alam, a BCAS research fellow who participated in the project from its earliest inception, cites the example of land degradation, which results in biodiversity losses as well as a heightening of ecosystem vulnerability to the ravages of flooding. "We cannot adequately deal with natural disasters without also addressing land degradation," says Alam. "Ongoing wetland losses and deforestation have made us more vulnerable to natural disasters." Deforestation results in topsoil losses and increased siltation; as riverbeds become more silted, the rivers themselves become more swollen and prone to flooding. Approximately 50% of the country's total land surface is wetlands, which have been drastically affected by the burgeoning human population.

Unlike more descriptive methods used in the past, this report uses standardized monitoring and assessment methods developed by the Organisation For Economic Co-operation and Development. "This methodology involves an analytical framework that enables us to effectively prioritize and assess key environmental concerns," says Alam. "It also helps us identify possible remediation and management strategies in a holistic manner." For example, the report proposes an integrated approach to water management that targets policy issues related to agriculture, energy, fisheries, forestry, industry, land use, protection of the drinking water supply, and wetlands preservation.

BCAS executive director Atiq Rahman says that, although the report integrates wide-ranging opinions of institutions and key individuals, a number of dominant interrelated issues were nor adequately addressed. These include poverty alleviation, demographic factors, and resource depletion. "The missing link has been the mechanisms of institutional linkages, and [linkages] between different sets of actors," says Rahman.

Feroze Ahmed, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, further notes that, although the key issues identified generally reflect the areas of concern in Bangladesh, the report is weak in its lack of up-to-date data and inadequate analysis of available information. Most of the data presented predate 1995, even though more recent environmental studies on water and air pollution and arsenic contamination were available from various sources. These recent studies are important because of the urgency they carry: Ahmed says that arsenic contamination of ground-water in the country is so widespread that 49 million people currently drink tubewell water with arsenic exceeding the World Health Organization guideline value of 10 micrograms per liter. "The possible longterm health risk of ingestion of excessive inorganic arsenic through drinking water is alarming," he says.