India, Bangla to join hands for Sundarbans

Special attention from the Centre for the ecologically fragile Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forests that is shared between India and Bangladesh, is seeing no abatement.

The Union minister for environment and forests, Jairam Ramesh, today said that a proposed Indo-Bangladesh Sundarbans Eco-System Forum was likely to be functional by the second half of this year.

"I am convinced of the need for a joint initiative between India and Bangladesh (on the Sundarbans). This forum will allow organisations from both countries to interact, and over a period of time it could enable the governments to take up joint projects," Ramesh said at an event here.

Flanked by his counterpart from Bangladesh, Ramesh said that he was expecting the official nod from the neighbouring government for setting up the forum "very soon".

“I am optimistic that the two governments will be in a position to launch the forum by September (2010),” he added.

On his part, Bangladesh's minister for environment and forests Hasan Mahmud said that saving the Sundarbans, of which 60 per cent area is on the Bangladeshi side and 40 per cent in India, was a requirement that needed a joint initiative.

The definitive decision to establish the bilateral forum comes months after Ramesh announced a $200-million World Bank-supported Integrated Coastal Zone Management Programme that will look into coastal areas including the Sundarbans.

Moreover, the Ministry of Environment and Forests has earmarked a Rs 450 crore special grant, to be spent over the next five years, for augmenting the crucial embankment system in the estuarine region.

This is separate from the Centre's Rs 5,032 crore project that is also aimed at improving the embankments that ring many inhabited islands in the Sundarbans.