Legal loopholes, lack of political will endanger ecosystems

Encroachers and polluters are damaging the country’s ecosystems, from forests and freshwater sources to mangroves and wetlands, by exploiting lack of political will, flaws in the environmental laws and lack of enforcement of legal provisions, said experts, reports NewAge.
They stressed the need to forge an all-out movement to compel the government to revise the out-dated laws as well as to ensure their enforcement.
‘There are laws and some courts to protect the environment, but the problem lies with enforcement and political will,’ BRAC University’s vice-chancellor, Ainun Nishat, told New Age on Friday.
An individual victim of environmental degradation, he said, cannot directly seek legal remedy although there are environmental courts and several laws. ‘An individual victim can only inform the Department of Environment, which is the only authority that is allowed to file a case against someone endangering or destroying the ecosystem.
But there are problems in the process.’
The existing Bangladesh Environment Conservation Act, enacted in 1995, does not have sufficient safeguards for controlling pollution of the environment, mainly of air, water and soil.
Successive governments have cautioned guilty industrialists that severe legal action would be taken against them for polluting the environment, but have done nothing else.
The polluters have been given deadlines, one after another, for voluntarily setting up effluent treatment plants to check environment pollution by their industries.
But only 250 out of 700 factory owners have set up effluent treatment plants so far, and all the factories with ETPs are not utilising them properly, filling the rivers with toxic chemicals and waste.
The rivers and the forests across the country have been encroached upon in many ways due to concerned authorities’ continued negligence.
The government was supposed to set up at least six environment courts at the divisional level under the Environment Court Act 2000 to punish the people guilty of encroachment on the rivers, forest and wetlands and polluting the environment, but it has so far set up only three environment courts, one each in Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet, which are dealing with about 250 cases.
Now the government is planning to set up environmental courts in 64 districts, according to the environment and forest ministry.
However Ainun Nishat, an adviser to the World Conservation Union (IUCN), asked, ‘What will be the use of setting up courts if an individual victim cannot avoid bureaucratic tangles and seek legal remedy on a personal level, and if the courts’ verdicts are not implemented?’
He said that the government ‘requires genuine political will’ for effective enforcement of environmental laws. ‘It is the responsibility of the government to take action against polluters and encroachers. It has to do it,’ he said.
‘The civil society organisations need to pressure the government to update and enforce the environmental laws,’ said Nishat.
Syeda Rizwana Hasan, executive director of the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers’ Association, said that the majority of the people were aware of the necessity of protecting the environment. ‘But we could not change the mindset of the politicians, which is much more important to enforce the laws. They (policymakers) are aware, but hardly anybody of them has the kind of commitment which is essential for sustainable protection of the environment,’ she said.
The government is surrounded by business interests groups and polluters who have been using continuation of development activities and employment generation as pleas for their unabated encroachment on, and pollution of, the natural ecosystem, said Rizwana, winner of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2009.
The environmental laws and environment courts are also suffering from several limitations, especially with regard to their jurisdiction and enforcement, she said.
The higher courts have been relatively environment-friendly, she said. ‘But the government and the polluters hardly abide by many verdicts and directives of the court.’
Rizwana said it has become essential to turn the government’s political will ‘into activism’ for protection of the environment. ‘Now we have two options, continuing regular protest or making people aware enough to go for active movement,’ she said.
BELA’s senior lawyer Iqbal Kabir said that in most of the cases polluters exploit the loopholes in the First Information Reports of cases filed against them to escape punishment.
State minister for environment and forests Hasan Mahmud said on Thursday that the government is planning to revise the environmental laws to extend their jurisdiction and make several provisions stricter.
‘Under the revised law, no one can run his industries without an Effluent Treatment Plant,’ Mahmud told a press conference at his office before the World Environment Day on June 5.
The theme of the World Environment Day 2010 is ‘Biodiversity — Ecosystems Management and Green Economy’.