A big threat to environment, the brick kilns are operating in an unregulated fashion defying the Bangladesh Brick Kiln Act, 2006 as well as the Bangladesh Environment Conservation Law, 1995 (amendment 2010).

And this defiance is largely due to lack of effective enforcement of the law which prohibits setting up of brick kilns within three kilometres of a reserve forest or a residential area and considers changing the characteristics of land a culpable crime.

Unsurprisingly, forests are being destroyed with abandon, while land characteristics of plain lands as well as alluvial topsoil get eroded and even hill tops damaged by unbridled growth of brick kilns.

To further complicate the problem, no government agency, neither the district administration, nor the Department of Environment (DoE) which regulates the brick kilns, is able to put a brake on their activities leading to massive destruction of forest lands leading to severe ecological imbalance.

A study conducted by a divisional forest office in Tangail shows that every year about 24 million standing trees equivalent to 96, 000 acres of forest lands are being consumed by brick fields. Whereas the rate of deforestation is only 0.6 per cent in South Asia, Bangladesh destroys its green top cover at a rate that is about more than five times (3.3 per cent).

In absence of any correct study on the number of brick fields, threat that they pose to the forest lands, or the environment, for that matter, turns out to be so huge, even if we assume that only 30 per cent of the fuels they (brick kilns) use are firewood.

The government should therefore persuade the entrepreneurs in the sector to switch to alternative technologies that do not depend on firewood.

What is most important is to apply the laws strictly to arrest the deforestation forthwith. At the same time, the government should strengthen the DoE, especially its enforcement and monitoring units, with sufficient manpower so that it may implement