Sharmin Shara Mim, Green Blogger

Feasilbility Of Human Intervention In Environment:

Development is elementary to develop a community and as a whole country. Sometimes human intervention need to utilize the natural resources for human wellbeing or development. Is human intervention always feasible to manage environment?

 Does Development Think About Most Marginal?

 Development thinks about some beneficiaries whereas ignores others. It has been a long debatable issue that downstream people were sufferer group while upstream people always reaped the benefit of dam. Muhuri dam in the Sonagazi upazilla of Feni in Bangladesh, had been built with a view to provide the irrigation water for upstream farmers’ whereas downstream farmers’ incur loss of livelihood. Salinity intrusion is high in downstream, during rainy season waterlogging and sudden flash-flood swallow the hard-earned crop of downstream farmers’. The success stories of successful farmers’ are documented while marginal people voice is unheard. Many farmers’ had lost their livelihoods because dam has consumed their land. Some were compensated with little lands and money, but that compensation was not sufficient to their loss. Many farmers’ have lost their indigenous livelihood and adapted to new livelihood such as small business, rickshaw pulling. Nearby lands of dam are converted to ‘fish gher’ where local influential have access. But upstream farmers’ have not documented any negative side of dam. Rather it had brought fortune for them. Dam provides water in their lean period for Boro harvesting; better communication makes their life easy by giving access to facilities such as easy access to Upazilla hospital, easy transportation to Bazar. It facilitates their small businesses

Environment And Development Coexistence:

Environment has also ravaged by this development project; more salinity intrusion in soil, loss of indigenous crop, river flow change. This delineates a very ambiguous picture for policymakers and raise a question: can environment and development work together? “We use nature because it is valuable, we lose nature because it is free”, Edward Barbier. In most development cases we ignore the nature because we have open access to it. With good planning, assessment and monitoring policymakers’ can execute a sustainable development project while taking care of environment and marginal people. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Social Impact Assessment ( SIA) can be a useful tool for planning the development project. EIA scrutinizes the prospective environmental effect of project while SIA examines the future adversity of project on marginal people. This detailed idea will help policymakers to take the right decision.

Room For More Sustainable Thinking:

Still there is room for question, some people are always excluded from development. How to mainstream them? Most developing countries development project are done without thorough scrutinization. This is the high time for policymakers to think about mainstream and sustainable development with proper planning and management.

About the Author: An amateur writer in her leisure time, Sharmin Shara Mim is currently working at Brac Institute of Educational Development, combining her passion for communication and facilitation. She has been engaged in youth capacity building since her university years. In that pursuit, she has done two internships on youth capacity building and climate change. She has written a short story anticipating climate change impact on earth titled “Ice Age”.

She also believes in youth leadership role to have positive impact on earth. She has been awarded the young change maker titled “Rising Star” by Wedu global. She is also a youth member of  YOUNGO- Children and Youth Constituency to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Her main areas of interest include youth, climate change, disaster management and conservation communication. She has completed her undergraduate academic  degree in Disaster and Human Security Management from Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP), Bangladesh.

Acknowledgement: This blog idea is encouraged from the research project titled " Impact of Muhuri Irrigation Project on the Livelihood of Small Farmers:  A Case Study of Sonagazi Upazilla, Feni. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my research supervisor Asikunnaby for his valuable guidance . Also, I am in debt of gratitude to my research mates Anika Ibnath and Raihanul Islam for their support during the project.