No urgent concern to clean-up oil-spill

OVER 70km square area is covered by the oil spill in the Sundarbans. The number of locals employed to manually collect oil from water is two hundred. Two trawlers have been deployed to spray water to clean the oil from plants. And Tk 2 lakh has been allocated for the clean-up operation. None of the money has actually reached the authorities concerned, as per reports of a local daily.
Needless to say the government is taking this horrendous disaster in the Sundarbans, the one and only such mangrove forest in the world, least seriously. And it is more interesting that none of the NGOs which are supposedly working on environment have engaged themselves in this clean-up operation. In the end, as nature photographer Sirajul Hossain has written on Facebook, it was the poor villagers and the underpaid foresters who had to undertake the clean-up of this mess caused by the rich.
The government’s reaction to the disaster has been one of nonchalance. The shipping minister, Shahjahan Khan, was quick to say, quoting some unnamed experts, that the spill would not have any adverse effect on the forest’s biodiversity. Even a person with below average IQ would disagree with such experts’ view.
As the spill spread all that the government did was to ask the forest department to do what it could think best — engage 200 men to do the job. Why not more remains a mystery. Every litre of oil soaked out of the river would have meant the loss of one less life – whether flora or fauna, which is unique to the Sundarbans.
There is an old saying that the value of a tooth is not felt unless it is lost. Similarly, we will not know the actual value of the Sundarbans unless we actually lose it. Forests act as huge reservoirs of carbon dioxide, preserve bio diversity and protect our coastlines and the people living there from natural disasters. They preserve and protect the environment by their very existence by keeping the air we breathe and the water we drink clean. They also provide livelihoods for the millions of households who depend on it for their economic sustenance.
Why was there a need for ships to pass through the rivers which surround it at all – to save a couple of miles of extra navigation through another channel? Can mere economics play a part in the destruction of hundreds of square kilometers of one of the most pristine forests in the world? Unfortunately. our policy makers have, by their myopic actions, contributed to this disaster. They are further compounding their mistakes by being negligent in cleaning up the forest. The impact of this oil spill – which occurred in minutes, will take years to accumulate. Tragically, the policy planners failed to realise it even at this crucial time.