Over-tourism alarm bells for Bangladesh’s only coral island

The 13-sqkm ‘Narikel Jinjira’ (Saint Martin’s Island) lies 9km off the south­ern­most tip of the Banglade­shi main­land. Sandy beaches, cor­al and clear blue water attract tour­ists, which, dur­ing peak sea­son, can num­ber up to 6,000 daily; 1,000 of whom stay overnight. The DoE reck­ons about 7,000 people live on the island. Thus, dur­ing the peak tour­ist sea­son, the island has to carry up to 13,000 people dur­ing the day and up to 8,000 at night. The DoE estim­ates St Mar­tin’s sus­tain­able car­ry­ing capa­city to be about 4,000 people.

This over-tour­ism (and over-pop­u­la­tion) has occurred des­pite Bangladesh declar­ing the island an Envir­on­ment­ally Crit­ic­al Area in 1999. The DoE has found many hotels and resorts oper­at­ing without hav­ing obtained man­dat­ory clear­ance. More than 100 build­ings have been built without DoE’s clear­ance. Most of these were con­struc­ted soon after the gov­ern­ment decided to set up a mar­ine park on the island. The High Court in 2011 asked author­it­ies to identi­fy and demol­ish build­ings con­struc­ted without DoE clear­ance. No evic­tion drive has been con­duc­ted in St Martin’s since. In March this year, the court issued a con­tempt rul­ing against 11 gov­ern­ment offi­cials for ignor­ing the 2011 directive.

Mar­ine bio­lo­gist Prof Dr Md Maruf Hossain con­duc­ted research on the status of the island’s mar­ine biod­iversity between 2006 and 2009. He noted that over-exploit­a­tion of renew­able mar­ine and coastal resources and remov­al of coastal veget­a­tion were major threats to the island’s ecosystem.

Saint Mar­tin’s Island, Bangladesh. By Shovon (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wiki­me­dia.

The num­ber of endangered sea turtles, includ­ing the green turtle and Olive Rid­ley turtle, that vis­it the island every winter to lay eggs has decreased sig­ni­fic­antly in recent years. Accord­ing to the DoE, camp­fires on beaches and the use of torches dis­rupt breed­ing. Fur­ther­more, stray dogs roam the beaches in search of turtle eggs and the turtles them­selves are often killed when they get caught in fish­ing nets.

St Martin’s is also home to rare flora and fauna, which are being adversely affected by human activ­ity, Chit­tagong Veter­in­ary and Anim­al Sci­ences University’s Prof Dr M Nurul Absar Khan said.

As tour­ist num­bers go up, so does the amount of waste. St Martin’s does not have a waste man­age­ment sys­tem to tackle the prob­lem. As a res­ult, raw sewage and oth­er waste is dis­charged in the open. And the island’s once pic­tur­esque sandy beaches are littered with debris. Prof Maruf said reg­u­lar beach clean­ing pro­grammes can help reduce the trash.

The DoE report noted that it was pos­sible to earn a sub­stan­tial rev­en­ue through tour­ism without dis­turb­ing the eco­lo­gic­al bal­ance. It pro­posed for­mu­lat­ing spe­cial guidelines for gov­ernance that would set fixed accom­mod­a­tion and tour­ist num­bers. It offered the Lak­shad­weep archipelago and the Anda­m­an and Nico­bar Islands of India as examples of islands gov­erned under spe­cial guidelines, as well as the Mal­dives and Macau.

The DoE has itself under­taken a BDT15.85 crore (BDT158.5 mil­lion ~ USD1.95 mil­lion) pro­ject to con­serve and improve the island’s biod­iversity, includ­ing by recre­at­ing keya tree (screw-pine; Pandanus odor­ifer) forests, regen­er­ate and con­serve cor­al, and cre­ate altern­at­ive jobs for cor­al and shell collectors.

Maruf said: “The gov­ern­ment should carry out a thor­ough sci­entif­ic study to determ­ine the island’s cur­rent state of envir­on­ment­al degrad­a­tion [and] should take cues from Thai­l­and and Indone­sia and go for eco­tour­ism to con­serve St Martin’s biodiversity.”

Source: This post is a sum­mary of a Dhaka Tribune report.

Fea­tured image: Sun­rise on Saint Mar­tin’s Island, Bangladesh. By Tah­mid Mun­az from Dhaka, Bangladesh (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wiki­me­dia.