“For Sake of Development” : A Decision of Deforestation

Few months ago, I was travelling to Jessore. The Jessore Road is very famous because of its precious history and also because of holding a beautiful look. The road was being prepared to be reconstructed. A four lane highway is to be made there. That is why, decision has been taken to fell more than two thousand trees located on two sides of the road. I think most of the people of our country were against cutting so many trees and still they are not happy with this four lane development.

The reasons of being against the chopping of trees are not invalid. The most important fact is , Bangladesh does not contain even half of the forest areas ideally required for maintaining a balanced natural environment. Where the minimum requirement is 25 per cent, it has only about 10 per cent. Chopping off the trees is environmentally unrealistic for this reason.

This highway is a part of 99 km long Jessore road spreaded to Dumdum in Kolkata. Bangladesh contains 38 km of it. The breadth of this highway is 24 km. On both sides of the highway, trees are alligned. And there are about 50 km of government land.

The Roads and Highway Department has decided to expand the highway to 10.6 metres. They will make it a four lane highway. In July, 2017, a plan was shelved to cut all the trees of roadsides for sake of developing the highway.

The environment expert says that felling thousands of trees randomly will harm the ecological balance of that area. Moreover, In this age of global warming, this deforestation will affect the natural environment very negatively. In future, there is no assurance of recovery of this loss.

Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (Bapa), WBB Trust, Tarupallab, Blue Planet Initiative, Nagarik Uddyog, Green Voice and Jessore Zila Samity, Dhaka jointly organised a press conference at Dhaka Reporters Unity to express their concern over the government decision.

The green activists said that about 2,312 trees would have to be cut to widen the road and it would be a disaster for the environment as the trees spread out on over 210 acres, almost similar to the size of a forest.

Some experts also showed that there could be constructed a completely new road without felling those trees. But the executive engineer of Jessore RHD said to the newspaper reporters that there was no alternative left for them. But notable fact is, a similar expansion of highway has already been made in kolkata on the extended jessore road but without felling trees.

On 6th of January, 2018, the local government of Jessore, the district commissioner, the district administrative officers, RHD officers, local lawmakers and the MPs of that area had a meeting at Jessore District Commissioner’s office and took the final decision to fell all the trees (more than 2300) while the court stated previous year that the government can continue development work for road, but without chopping down the trees on the road, following a written petition filed by Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh.

Now, talking about the administrative decision making of Herbert Simon, he put forward a concept before us related to decision making. He believed that the administrative should be concerned with the process of decision making as well as action. In this process there should be formulation of problem, compilation of relevent and necessary information, choice of the best return, implementation of decision, to evolve their effectiveness.

Simon said that scientific process must exclude value judgements and emphasize on facts. An administrative science need to be concerned purely with factual statements. There is no place for statements of value or ethics in scientific studies. If we suppose that the local government do not care for any value judgement, they just emphasizes on facts ignoring local people’s emotions, how the fact of environment well being was ignored so easily?

Then, Decision should be dynamic, not a static one. The administrative man should be aware of the alternatives and the other consequences of his decision. In design activity, all possible paths of action should be considered. But the Roads and Highways Department authority said that, there was no option left for them.

But in an administrative decision making process, there need to explore all possible alternatives. Decision makers need to research on the operation, what kind of problems may arise and how they can be solved. Just planning or designing a decision from one sided perspective is not expected.

Simon focused well on bounded rationality. He defined decision as the optimum rational choice between all courses of alternatives. He referred rationality as a process evaluating consequences while selecting an definite action. Did the planner of four lane highway of jessore evaluate this ? In stead of optimizing decision with full rationality, Simon promotes the concept of Satisficing decision. Satisficing indicates a decision that both satisfactory and sufficing. But this decision to deforest was neither satisfactory nor sufficing properly.

To Herbert Simon, the administrative decision making should be on factual premises based on systematic steps, empirical investigation and analysis, inductive and destructive methods. If the proper analysis or investigation was done, how could the RHD or local government fail to understand the impact of deforestation ? How could they ignore the feedbacks of environment specialist?

According to simon, decision makers either are economic man or administrative man. Economic man can not perceive all possible alternatives, can not predict all possible consequences. He focuses on economic utilization. But administrative man studies the whole issue in a scientific way, it can be using mathematical tools, operation research, linear programming, system analysis, computer simulations etc. and explore the probable ways of action and based on a number of premises, compiling all informations , choose the best one.

I am not well aware of the process how or on basis of which logics the decision to chop trees was finalized. The decision makers may have calculated that felling so many trees would gain a huge quantity of wood or timber. Selling those a huge amount of money, crore of taka would be earned.

To make a new plan, there would be cost again.

Not used government lands of both sides of road would be used for any other purpose.

But thus with an intention saving money, or gaining money, did the RHD make a proper administrative decision? Could they fill up the criteria of administrative man or bounded rationality? Why are they being too ignorant to make a decision considering the climate and environmental facts and consequences?