Successive governments have been shelving the initiative to establish an oceanographic institute which is essential for doing research on marine and seabed resources, experts told New Age.
‘For several years successive governments have been talking about establishing an Institute of Oceanography under the Ministry of Science and Technology, but there has been no progress in this regard so far,’ Professor Kazi Matin Uddin Ahmed of the Department of Geology under the University of Dhaka told New Age on Tuesday.
‘How can we identify and extract marine and seabed resources if we do not have any research-based idea of their presence, possibility of extraction and the technology necessary for extraction?’ he asked.
The total sea area of Bangladesh is around 2,07,000 square kilometres, which is 1.4 times greater than its total land area, if the maritime boundaries are delimited under the UN Convention.
There ‘is hardly any scientist and expert’ on marine and seabed resources, said Professor Ahmed, adding that the marine biology department at the Chittagong University was working only on marine biological species.
The hydrographic and oceanographic centre of the Bangladesh Navy, which has been looking after only ‘strategic issues’, is also suffering from shortage of experts, said a senior navy official.
No public or private university here offers courses on oceanography, said a foreign ministry expert.
‘The occurrence of gas inside our claimed maritime boundary is a proven fact. However, we are not totally aware of the occurrence of some other seabed resources such as oil, cobalt, nickel, copper, manganese, iron, zinc, frozen natural gas, tin, titanium and zircon,’ he said.
Capacity building in oceanography ‘is one of the key areas for exploration and sustainable utilization’ of these resources, he said.
‘We must have a vision for exploration of resources on and under the seabed and take proper initiatives now so that those resources within our marine boundary can be harnessed in the future,’ he said.
‘We also need to acquire sufficient knowledge on oceanography before carrying out a detailed survey or exploiting resources under the seabed,’ he added.
The foreign ministry requested the education ministry at an inter-ministry meeting to ensure quick establishment of the Institute of Oceanography, said a senior official.
An initiative was taken to establish an Institute of Oceanography under the science, information and communication technology ministry in 1999, he said. ‘But there has hardly been any progress in the last 11 years.’
The state minister for science and information and communication technology, Yafesh Osman, told New Age, ‘The initiative [to set up the institute] was kept pending for about 10 years because of bureaucratic bottlenecks. The current government has allocated about 40 acres of land in Cox’s Bazar for establishment of the institute and a marine aquarium.’
‘It will be a Tk 150 crore project’, he added.
The marine aquarium ‘will also be a tourist attraction’, he added.
The government has allocated Tk 22 crore to construct a building for the institute in the first phase of the project, said a senior official of the ministry.
Scientists and teachers will be appointed after completion of the building, he added.
