Rampal Coal Fired Power Plant On Sundarbans: A Project Of Deception And Mass Destruction
By Anu Muhammad
19 September, 2013
Thousands of people, young and old, women and men, are now preparing for
Rampal Coal Fired Power Plant On Sundarbans: A Project Of Deception And Mass Destruction
By Anu Muhammad
19 September, 2013
Thousands of people, young and old, women and men, are now preparing for more than 400 km 5 days long march from Dhaka, the capital city, to Digraj a place in Rampal, the extended Sundarbans area, in South west Bangladesh begins from 24 September 2013. Organized by the ‘National Committee to Protect Oil Gas Mineral Resources Port and Power', the main demand for this long march is to cancel ‘Rampal coal fired power plant' and stop all activities that would destroy Sundarban. Why people around the country have become so sensitive, and why they are coming forward to resist this?
How the Sundarbans is vital for our existence?
The name Sundarbans???????? is a combination of two Bangla words, Sundar and Bans. Sundar means beautiful and Bans means forests. So, in English, Sundarbans means the beautiful forests. Yes, it is. Not only beautiful in all senses, it is extraordinarily rich in biodiversity, single largest mangrove forest in the world. UNESCO declared it as world heritage site. This has also been a huge natural safe guard against frequent cyclone, storm and other natural disasters in the country. Sidr, Aila, Mohasen were recent ones. Our living memory shows that in every natural disaster, Sundarban saves lives of hundreds of thousands human beings, their properties, and other non-human lives.
About 200 years ago, the Sundarban was much larger; it was then measured and found to be about 16,700 km². The present Sundarban is one third of that. The total land area today is 4,143 km² and the water area of 1,874 km² consisted of rivers, small streams and canals. ‘Rivers in the Sundarban are meeting places of salt water and freshwater. Thus, it is a region of transition between the freshwater of the rivers originating from the Ganges and the saline water of the Bay of Bengal.' The Sundarban is spread into two countries, Bangladesh and India, but ‘.... freshwater reaching the mangroves has been considerably reduced since the 1970s due to diversion of freshwater in the upstream area by India through the use of the Farakka Barrage bordering Rajshahi, Bangladesh '. ( Wahid, S.M., Alam, M.J. and Rahman, A. “Mathematical river modelling to support ecological monitoring of the largest mangrove forest of the world – the Sundarbans”, 2002). Despite many activities of grabbing looting and forest unfriendly activities, about 60 per cent of the bans is still surviving in Bangladesh.
This mangrove forest is unique because of its history, size, productivity and significance in balancing the local ecosystem. ‘It is the largest mangrove patch in the world; the second largest is only one-tenth of its size in Malaysia. The Sundarbans is unprecedented in biological diversity and wildlife resources too. The renowned Bengal Tiger (Panthera Tigris) is synonymous with the Sundarbans which is the largest remaining natural habitat of the man-eating wild cat... Despite official land reclamation programs and continued exploitation of produces from this swamp forests, they still survive with multiple threats originating from the modern world'. ( Bangladesh Environment Facing the 21 st Century, Sehd, 2007 )
The forest has been playing unparallel protective and productive functions. In addition to its role as natural safeguard, it is also the single largest source of forest produce in the country. The Sundarbans also plays an important role in creating economic value in the national economy and employment creating opportunities for the millions. It now covers more than 60% of the total reserved forest of Bangladesh, contributes about 50% of total forest revenue.
Forest cover in Bangladesh is far less then adequate, and also the health of the surviving forests is extremely poor. An overview of forests in Bangladesh correctly observed that, this poor health of forests has not been caused by natural process; rather the human greed and corporate aggressive penetration destroyed the natural process of growth and expansion of the forests that also put human survival in danger. Wrong and grabber friendly policies, wrong headed investment and commercialization, destructive investment made this happen, In fact ‘ most of the forests were stolen' by the process of profit making ventures' ( Stolen Forests by Phillip Gain, 2006). With the rise of extent of primitive accumulation, Sundarbans also suffered like other forests, rivers and open space in Bangladesh.
Rampal Power Plant: the Final Blow
Now t he mere existence of the Sundarbans has been threatened by an attempt to build 1320 MW coal fired power plant in Rampal, the larger Sundarban area. This proposed Rampal Coal Power Project is a joint venture project 