Historical Insights into Wetland Management in Bangladesh: Policies, Practices, and Transformations

Bangladesh is a least developed country with a meager resource base and huge population and a very low land-man ratio.The geographical location of the country makes it one of the most vulnerable place on earth to floods and cyclones.Major environmental concerns of Bangladesh include natural hazards, wetlands, deforestation, pollution, arsenic, solid waste management and global warming.Natural resources have already been over-exploited.So, governance and management of environmental policies is critical is critical in the context of Bangladesh.The country is a signatory to a number of Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) still its capacity to implement the agreed decisions of MEA's are extremely limited.Environmental sector can boasts plethora of institutions and large number of laws, rules and regulations.In spite of the existence of multiplicity of institutions and the presence of an overarching legal regime, the governance and management of environment sector remains weak and disjointed.Lack of effective coordination among different governmental and non-governmental agencies; insignificant level of popular participation at the implementation stage of programs and projects, alleged corruption at different stages of the project cycle; lack of meaningful civil society initiative all contribute in different degrees to the present unsatisfactory state of environmental governance and management.