Smoking / ETS kills, prime reason for cancer, asthma, other lung diseases and other deadly diseases. It is diagnosed as the greatest silent killer on earth. Smoking has no positive contribution to human health or to the environment. It affects almost all organs of the body, leading to carcinogenic diseases and ending in premature mortality. Infants and children are most at risk. Although the overall smoking trend is slowly declining but smoking rate among students and young adults (both men and women) are disturbingly increasing in Australia despite strong collaborative efforts of public and private sector to curb tobacco smoking. Exposure to smoking is a violation of the right of all individuals to breathe clean air. Although people can’t be forced to quit smoking, but regulation can be tightened, and strict enforcement of law would be a good deterrent for smokers. Australia has banned tobacco smoking in all public places and Bangladesh government could follow that noble initiative. In addition, community engagement, awareness building through education, accompanied by punishing smoking / ETS producers with hefty fines. Bangladesh unfortunately belongs among the top five smoking nation on earth. About 43% of people smokes and in the long run it will bring catastrophic consequences. Currently there are about 1.5 million cancer patients and about 3 30 million kidney patients and growing. A major contributor is tobacco and ETS. Unless urgent measures are taken the country will be flooded with patients with incurable diseases, a burden the country can’t afford to handle.
Following the implementation of GWP (Global Water Partnership) in 1996 by UN the countries around the world began to implement the principles of IWRM to minimize water waste and maximize its beneficial use. The Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperative in Bangladesh also adapted the idea and created IWRM unit in 2003 through WARPO, CEGIC and IWM. Bangladesh is going through serious shortages of fresh water resources. Major reasons are: diversion of natural river flow in the upstream area; rapid siltation on river beds which have seriously reduced water holding capacity causing regular floods destroying crops, making people homeless and even loosing many lives, destroying economic progress; and change of climate pattern, seawater encroachment due to sea level rise destroying fresh water resources and cropping lands due to climate change impact and greenhouse gas emission. To overcome these issues the country must adapt the following steps: implementation of IWRM practices to its maximum capacity. IWRM will include surface water, groundwater, waste water and sewage water resources to design its maximum utilization. In addition WSUD techniques; urgent dredging of rivers; positive negotiation with the neighbors for surface water sharing and storing excess surface water during monsoon at series of reservoirs built in upstream locations and use them during dry season. The biggest task of Bangladesh IWRM is to educate all stake holders; establish proper coordination among all water management sectors and train up end users to transform them as guardian angels of water conservation.
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.