Environmentalists urge clear coastal protection pledges in election manifestos
Staff Reporter:
Environmental activists have urged political parties to include clear and specific commitments to protect coastal ecosystems and livelihoods in their election manifestos, warning that unchecked environmental degradation is triggering a deepening crisis in the country’s coastal regions.
The call was made on Sunday at a general meeting of the Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (BAPA) held at the WVA Auditorium in the capital. Speakers said environmental disasters, intensified by climate change, are forcing people to leave the south-western coastal belt, leading to a steady decline in population in the region.
The meeting was chaired by BAPA President Professor Nur Mohammad Talukder. A formal proposal was placed by Nikhil Chandra Bhadra, coordinator of the Sundarbans and Coastal Protection Movement.
Among those who addressed the meeting were BAPA Vice-President and BEN founder Dr Nazrul Islam, BEN Global Coordinator Dr Md Khalequzzaman, BAPA Vice-Presidents Mahidul Haque Khan and Professor M Shahidul Islam, BAPA General Secretary Md Alamgir Kabir, and Joint Secretary Professor Ahmed Kamruzzaman Majumder.
Ahead of the upcoming 13th national parliamentary election, the meeting adopted an 11-point demand, calling on all political parties to reflect these issues in their manifestos.
The demands include declaring coastal areas as climate-vulnerable special zones, allocating dedicated funds in the national budget for coastal protection, ensuring long-term solutions for salinity control and access to safe drinking water, and converting every coastal household into a shelter-capable structure to reduce disaster-related losses.
Other demands include ensuring representation of affected communities in coastal decision-making, taking effective steps to protect the Sundarbans as a global heritage site, freeing rivers and water bodies from encroachment and pollution to restore natural flow, creating green belts through afforestation, constructing durable embankments and repairing old ones, promoting agricultural development and alternative livelihoods, and establishing a Coastal Development Board.
In the proposal, speakers noted that although Bangladesh is responsible for only 0.4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, it remains one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, with coastal regions bearing the brunt.
Over the past two decades, the frequency of disasters in coastal areas has increased tenfold due to climate change, severely affecting lives, livelihoods, property, food security, water supply and housing.
The meeting highlighted an acute drinking water crisis across coastal zones, exacerbated by salinity intrusion and unplanned shrimp farming, particularly in the Sundarbans region. According to the proposal, 73 percent of families in the Sundarbans coastal belt are deprived of safe drinking water or forced to rely on unsafe sources.
Speakers also pointed to the lack of sustainable embankments, which allows even regular tidal surges to flood vast coastal areas each year.
Encroachment, pollution and siltation of rivers and water bodies were cited as key drivers of environmental collapse, contributing to forced migration and population decline in the south-western coast.
Environmentalists stressed that without strong political commitment and a coordinated action plan, the coastal crisis will continue to deepen, threatening both human security and the country’s ecological future.