Environmental Governance of Urban-Local Government in Bangladesh: Policies and Practices

Abstract

Environmental problems begin locally. The farmer who uses slash and burn agriculture to solve his hunger problem does not know or care that he is one of 1,000,000 who is destroying the nation’s forests and making a significant contribution to global warming. The latrines constructed too close to the river, the cows left to bathe there, the factory which turns its pipe for waste water carelessly toward the river to make production easier and cheaper: this is how a nation’s water resources are destroyed. As the problem is fundamentally local, the solution is always local too. National leaders have spent too much time at global summits where little could be accomplished without taking the boring, painstaking steps at local levels. This study documents the fact that “Think global, act local” is a vital principle of environmental governance. Global action can never be more than the sum of millions of local actions and each can go for or against a healthy environment. This study finds that the local governments which should be in the vanguard of environmental protection, saving ponds, disposing of or recycling solid waste, preventing building and other infrastructural development from damaging the environment, are not in fact even carrying their weapons. The laws are there and they are good: but in practice they are virtually ignored. So, nothing gets done. So this study focuses on the local governments. We have selected Rajshahi as a typical Divisional city and Rajshahi City Corporation as a typical urban centre in Bangladesh, to see what local governments could do, can do and are doing. Through key informant interviews, questionnaires of stakeholders and review of documents, we have found what is happening in practice in this City Corporation. From this case study, we can infer what is happening in the other Divisional cities. The conclusion is that there is a large gap between written policy/law and implementation. Other researchers should confirm that this is not just a problem of Rajshahi. Then we have recommended that the central government should do something: make penalties serious; mandate community involvement; provide resources; consolidate overlapping local jurisdictions and establish one agency in each City Corporation to monitor and act on the environmental health of the city, with sufficient professional staff, prosecutorial power and financial backing to get the job done.