Bangladesh’s wooden houses are now in Belgium, Europe
Recently, various media outlets have been reporting with great importance and pride that wooden houses made in Bangladesh, are going to Belgium, Europe. The demand for these ‘eco-friendly’ and attractive wooden houses is increasing in Europe. A Bangladeshi company has got the opportunity to meet that demand.
A Bangladeshi company has secured the contract by winning a tender competition against companies from Britain, Vietnam, and other nations. Local craftsmen in Bagerhat District, Bangladesh will export wooden houses made from local materials to Europe, where they will also install them. This is a significant achievement.
Readers may conclude that the country’s export market is growing. Reports suggest that exporting ‘eco-friendly’ houses will create new markets, jobs, and opportunities for earning foreign currency.
The news report seems to suggest that this initiative will be ‘environmentally friendly’ for our country. Therefore, this entrepreneur is also expecting government support for this work.
Some of the things that the entrepreneurs are ‘happy’ about are, in their words, ‘working differently to prevent climate change,’ getting the opportunity for craftsmen from very remote area of Bagerhat in Bangladesh to go to Europe, the materials being biodegradable and ‘environmentally friendly’, employment for rural people, both men and women, and above all, foreign exchange earnings for the country, etc.
An environmentally conscious person, instead of being happy right here, has to think twice. Why should we use our limited tree resources to protect other countries’ environments by sending eco-friendly houses to Europe?
Is it logical to cut down trees in Bangladesh, the eighth most densely populated country, to make Europe more environmentally friendly, especially when environmental issues are already evident there?
We shouldn’t be complacent just because we’ve succeeded in this harmful task by competing with a few other countries. We have survived the competition by showing lower prices than other countries due to our cheap labor and lack of alternative employment.
It is known that once upon a time, some countries, including Croatia, Bulgaria, and others, used to export wooden houses. But now that their economic situation has improved, they have stopped destroying their forest resources.
Therefore, the responsibility of making Europe environmentally friendly has fallen on Bangladesh. Of course, countries like Lithuania and Estonia are still exporting wooden houses to other European countries.
If we compare our forest resources with the countries exporting wooden houses, we see that Croatia’s forest area is 34 of the country’s area and Bulgaria’s is 36 percent. In Lithuania, this rate is 34 and in Estonia, 52 percent. However, only 16 percent of Bangladesh’s area is forest land (in reality, it may be less).
Recently, cassava, or Shimul Alu, has been included in the deforestation and reforestation festival in the hilly areas of Chittagram, Bangladesh. Hundreds of acres of forest land are being cleared for cassava cultivation in the districts of the Chittagram Hill Tracts to increase the cultivation area.
According to experts, the cultivation of this tuber-like crop by cutting down forests leads to soil erosion, the inevitable result of which is landslides, which have been increasing in recent years.
