The forest and her children — images of pain

ONLINE GALLERY

The story of Natural heritage, the forest of Bangladesh, is a pain-filled one. The forest cover has exhausted from 18% in the first half of the twentieth century to about 6%. Bangladesh still has significant mangrove forests but in other forestland only tiny patches of the natural forests are left today.

There are many factors for the depletion of forests. Foremost among these are colonial trends of extraction, and commercial and industrial plantations. In Bangladesh, plantation of exotic or invasive species dates back to 1873, but these have rapidly expanded in recent times.

While tree plantation in rural Bangladesh has yielded much of the desired results, plantations, especially with invasive or exotic species, on public forest land have caused environmental disasters and human misery. Plantations of teak, rubber, eucalyptus, acacia, pine and other exotics that we see on public forest land in Bangladesh are "simple plantation forestry". Native forests have been cleared for plantations.

Governments, companies, pulp/paper industries, international financial institutions, etc. strongly support and finance these plantations.

There is a government objective "To re-place the existing irregular, depleted and less productive forests by a man-made plantation forest with more valuable and productive species suited to the soil and country's requirements". This objective has had devastating effects for Bangladesh.
The images in the exhibition, "Cry of the Forest" by Philip Gain tell the story of drastic depletion of our forest traditions.

One particular focus of the exhibition is the forest people, especially the indigenous communities, who have traditionally sourced the forest for their livelihood and have lived in harmony with Nature. But plantations and legal reforms have rendered the children of the forest illegal residents on their traditional homeland as well.

The Society for Environment and Human Development (SEHD), out of concern for the current state of environment, has given Philip Gain an outstanding opportunity to study the fate of our forests. His journey through the Natural heritage for more than a decade has made this exhibition possible.
The Photography Exhibition by Philip Gain was first organized at Drik Gallery from 11 to 17 June 2003.