Violence in Rakhine State of Myanmar forcibly displaced nearly one million Rohingya. They took refuge, from August 25, 2017 to the time of writing, in Cox's Bazar–Teknaf Peninsula of Bangladesh. Initially, nearly 2,000 ha of forested lands had to be cleared to accommodate them in one of the most ecologically critical areas (ECA) in the Peninsula. To support Rohingyas livelihoods, fuelwood collection and illegal logging have become widespread since their arrival, causing severe environmental degradation, including loss of a vast amount of forest cover. To devise conservation and protection strategies for a highly sensitive ecosystem, it is imperative to understand the degree of forest cover deterioration and associated impacts related to Rohingya emigration. This study employed satellite images and collateral data to monitor and model spatiotemporal patterns of forest cover degradation and loss of ecosystem function in Cox's Bazar–Teknaf Peninsula. Supervised classification method was used to derive multi‐date land use/cover data which was then utilized to monitor spatiotemporal pattern of forest cover change from 2017 to 2019. A projection of forest cover loss was also carried out using the Markov chain with cellular automata technique. Dynamic modeling was performed to predict changes in forest covers, assuming that displaced Rohingya continues to reside in this environmentally sensitive location. The result revealed that 3,130 ha of forested lands of different categories were transformed into either refugee camps or Rohingya influenced degraded forests between 2017 and 2019. Prediction showed that around 5,115 ha of forest cover may experience loss from 2019 to 2027. Furthermore, aboveground biomass and carbon stock estimation indicated a consistent and substantial loss during the study period, which is likely to swell if present deforestation rate continues. The findings have considerable implications in developing conservation decisions, priority interventions and public policies to save the ECA of Bangladesh.
The reduction of inequalities in access to quality care has been a central tenet of UK health policy. Ethnic minorities may experience additional inequalities because of language and other cultural barriers. This article reports interviewer reflections of conducting interviews with South Asian kidney patients about their experiences of end-of-life care. It explores themes which emerged from the analysis of a focus group held with eight bilingual research interviewers. The relevance of these themes to understanding inequalities and access to end-of-life care is discussed; together with the potential for the research process to contribute to service improvement.
Overdependence and cumulative anthropogenic stresses have caused world forests to decrease at an unprecedented rate, especially in Southeast Asia. The Cox’s Bazar–Teknaf Peninsula of Bangladesh is not an exception and follows the global deforestation trend. Despite being one of the country’s richest forest ecosystems with multiple wildlife sanctuaries, reserve forests, and influential wildlife habitats, the peninsula is now providing shelter for nearly one million Rohingya refugees. With the global deforestation trend coupled with excessive anthropogenic stresses from the Rohingya population, the forests in the peninsula are continuously deteriorating in terms of quality and integrity. In response to deforestation, the government invested in conservation efforts through afforestation and restoration programs, although the peninsula faced a refugee crisis in August 2017. The impact of this sudden increase in population on the forest ecosystem is large and has raised questions and contradictions between the government’s conservation efforts and the humanitarian response. Relocation of the refugees seems to be a lengthy process and the forest ecosystem integrity needs to be preserved; therefore, the degree of stresses, level of impacts, and pattern of deforestation are crucial information for forest conservation and protection strategies. However, there are a lack of quantitative analyses on how the forest ecosystem is deteriorating and what future results would be in both space and time. In this study, the impact of the sudden humanitarian crisis (i.e., Rohingya refugees) as anthropogenic stress in Cox’s Bazar–Teknaf peninsula has been spatiotemporally modeled and assessed using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and other collateral data. Using the density and accessibility of the Rohingya population along with the land cover and other physiographic data, a multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) technique was applied through the Markov cellular automata technique to model the forest vegetation status. The impact of deforestation differs in cost due to variability of the forest vegetation covers. The study, therefore, developed and adopted three indices for assessment of the forest ecosystem based on the variability and weight of the forest cover loss. The spatial severity of impact (SSI) index revealed that out of 5415 ha of total degraded forest lands, 650 ha area would have the highest cost from 2017 to 2027. In the case of the ecosystem integrity (EI) index, a rapid decline in ecosystem integrity in the peninsula was observed as the integrity value fell to 1190 ha (2019) from 1340 ha (2017). The integrity is expected to further decline to 740 ha by 2027, if the stress persists in a similar fashion. Finally, the findings of ecosystem integrity depletion (EID) elucidated areas of 540 and 544 hectares that had a severe EID score of (−5) between 2017 and 2019 and 2017 and 2027, respectively. The displacement and refugee crisis is a recurrent world event that, in many cases, compromises the integrity and quality of natural space. Therefore, the findings of this study are expected to have significant global and regional implications to help managers and policymakers of forest ecosystems make decisions that have minimal or no impact to facilitate humanitarian response.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.