RAJSHAHI, March 23, 2019 (BSS) – Speakers at a discussion here today laid importance on sustainable land management for food security, calling for evolving necessary ways and means to protect lands from further degradation.
Land is a very important component of environment and land use change, and land degradation is now being considered as a serious threat to sustainable development and food security of the county, they said at training workshop here today.
Barind Multipurpose Development Authority (BMDA) organized the workshop under the project ‘Establishing National Land Use and Land Degradation Profile towards Mainstreaming SLM Practices in Sector Policies’ at its conference hall.
Addressing the opening session of the workshop BMDA chairman Dr Akram Hossain Chowdhury said ensuring prudent use of land resources has become a major challenge as the agricultural land is shrinking at an alarming rate.
He laid importance on evolving a time-fitting ways and means to protect lands from further degradation against the backdrop of increasing demand of land for development purposes and multipurpose uses.
Project Director of Department of Environment Dr Shohrab Ali said the workshop has been designed to secure healthy environment for the benefit of present and future generation.
Productivity of land is declining largely because of inappropriate agricultural use and top soil loss. By and large, the amount of land is declining g fast for cultivation.
Dr Jalal Uddin Soaib, coordinator of the project, in his keynote speech gave an overview of the project and its implementation strategy while engineer Abdur Rashid, Executive Director of BMDA was in the chair.
Dr Jalal said the two-year project intends to increase understanding of people about land use and state of land degradation side by side with mainstreaming SLM in every sector.
As a whole, the scheme will highlight on land degradation and other critical environmental hazards and demonstrate practical solutions through awareness building and engagement of stakeholders, organizers said.