he images in the exhibition Cry of the Forest tell the story of the drastic depletion of forest area and the traditions of the forest people. One particular focus of the exhibition is the forest people, especially the indigenous communities, who have traditionally soured the forest for their livelihood and have lived in harmony with nature. Plantations and legal reforms have rendered the children of the forest illegal residents on their traditional homeland.

The exhibition also shows the devastating effects of the plantation of exotic or invasive species on the environment.

Exhibition Details

Exhibition: 2003
Catalogue: English
Photographer: Philip Gain
Price: Tk.50 / US$2

BANGLADESH Environment: Facing the 21st Century is a citizen based country report on the state of Bangladesh’s environment. SEHD published the first edition in 1998 and the second edition in 2002.

The report, essentially a compound of crucial and critical information, expert analyses, critiques and field reports on major environmental issues of Bangladesh, makes an obvious attempt to provide a context to understand Bangladesh and its environment.

The book has more than 140 photographs, 29 maps and satellite images on major aspects of Bangladesh’s environment, uniquely presents the state of the country’s environment. Each section of the report is comprehensive and presents an issue in a unique style.

The areas covered in different sections of the report are: land, soil and landscape; river, water and wetlands; agriculture; forests; fisheries; wildlife biodiversity and its resource potential; genetic resources; energy resources; industrialization and industrial pollution; air pollution; disasters: issues and responses; arsenic contamination; jute and polythene; health; habitat; environmental laws in Bangladesh; selected environmental issues; and citizens’ responses to environmental issues.

Publication Details

Published: 2002 (2nd edition)
Language: English
Hardback: 341 pages
Editor: Philip Gain
Price: Tk.600  US$20

Bangladesh is amazingly green with great biodiversity. But at the same time it is a forest-poor country that has lost its forest cover from about 20% in 1927 to a mere 6% today. Outside the Sundarbans, only tiny patches of forests remain.

What factors have led to this situation? The typical response of the Forest Department (FD) is that those who live in and around the forests are encroachers and despoilers of the public forests. International financial institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and companies engaged in the forestry sub-sector argue that growing population, poverty, migration of landless people into the forest areas, shifting cultivation, illegal felling, fuelwood collection, etc. cause the degradation of forests.

But why would the people, materially and spiritually intertwined with the forests, destroy what is so important for their life and environment? Are the forest-dwelling ethnic communities, who have lived in the forests for centuries really encroachers?

The Last Forests of Bangladesh focuses on the factors, deep-rooted in our colonial past and in the globalization of capital that contribute to the destruction of our public forests. The author argues with background information, facts and stories on how the reservation of the public forests by the governments, monoculture plantation, extraction of raw materials from the natural forests for pulp and paper mills, industrial plantation, rubber in place of native forests, the so-called “social forestry” and export-oriented prawn aquaculture, etc have greatly contributed to the rapid destruction of the forests.

This book is a valuable source book for anyone interested in understanding what has been happening to our alarmingly limited public forests and the forest-dwelling people whose lives are doomed without forests.

Publication Details

Published: 2002 (2nd edition)
Language: English
Paperback: 224 pages
Author: Philip Gain
Price: Tk.350  US$15