Since assuming office in August 2024, Syeda Rizwana Hasan, adviser to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, has delivered a steady stream of strong public statements promising sweeping reforms on pollution, deforestation, river encroachment, wildlife protection and plastic use.
A former environmental lawyer and long-time activist, she was expected to turn courtroom arguments into real-world results. But more than a year later, her tenure has increasingly come under scrutiny for what critics describe as a widening gap between declaration and delivery.
No issue illustrates this more clearly than Saint Martin’s Island, the country’s only coral island and one of its most ecologically fragile tourist destinations. Since taking office, Rizwana has spoken about Saint Martin more frequently than any other single environmental concern. She warned that uncontrolled tourism was destroying coral habitats and repeatedly stated that conservation must take precedence over commercial activity.
In early 2025, authorities imposed a long travel suspension to the island, lasting roughly nine months, citing environmental protection. The move, however, devastated the island’s tourism-dependent residents, many of whom had shifted from fishing to hospitality over the past decade.
Rizwana later said alternative livelihoods would be arranged and promised a comprehensive conservation-focused master plan before any reopening. Yet no publicly available timeline for ecological restoration, coral regeneration, or community transition has been announced.
When the island was reopened in late 2025, the main visible change was a cap on tourist numbers, rather than a fundamental overhaul of waste management, sewage systems or reef protection.
Local stakeholders say the policy appears more symbolic than transformative, while environmental researchers point out that without baseline ecological data and long-term monitoring, it remains unclear whether the island is actually recovering.
Her approach to single-use plastics has followed a similar pattern. In September 2024, Rizwana announced a sweeping ban on the production, transport, storage, sale and use of polythene shopping bags, along with a plan to eliminate single-use plastics from government offices and markets.
The ban was visibly enforced in super shops, which she cited as a success. But officials within her own ministry acknowledged that super shops make up only 1.6 to 2.5 percent of the retail market. In ordinary wet markets and small shops, polythene remains ubiquitous, accounting for nearly 98 percent of daily usage.
According to Department of Environment data, from November 2024 till date, mobile courts collected nearly Tk1.3 crore in fines, seized around 23.36 lakh kilograms of banned polythene, sealed 28 factories and jailed three individuals. Yet enforcement was interrupted in late 2025 when manpower was diverted to air pollution control, exposing the fragility of the crackdown.
Officials also admit that without affordable alternatives, the ban is structurally weak. Polythene bags are typically free, while jute or reusable bags cost between Tk20 and Tk60—an expense many low-income shoppers are unwilling or unable to bear.
The country generates about 87,000 tonnes of single-use plastic annually, with an estimated 96 percent discarded directly as waste. Despite legal bans, officials concede that strict, continuous monitoring is difficult, particularly outside major urban centres.
Rizwana herself has acknowledged that polythene use is a long-standing habit that cannot be eliminated overnight, but critics argue that her policy has moved faster in rhetoric than in building the infrastructure needed to make change realistic.
The same tension appears in air pollution control. Dhaka was ranked the world’s second most polluted city last year, and in 2026 its Air Quality Index has consistently hovered between 200 and 300, levels considered “very unhealthy.” In 2025, the capital’s average PM2.5 concentration was roughly 40 times higher than the World Health Organization’s recommended limit.
While enforcement drives against black-smoke-emitting vehicles have intensified, officials admit that there are currently no mega projects under direct implementation. The Bangladesh Clean Air Project, backed by the World Bank, remains stuck at the approval stage.
Bangladesh has more than 6.5 million registered vehicles, with around 2.3 million in Dhaka alone. Yet nationwide enforcement is carried out by only six magistrates.
Rizwana has argued that if the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority strictly enforced fitness standards and scrapped unfit vehicles, her ministry would not need to rely so heavily on mobile courts. Still, she has also acknowledged that manpower shortages make meaningful control extremely difficult.
Her statements on river pollution and encroachment have also outpaced visible results. Since August 2024, she has repeatedly called for community-based monitoring and the preparation of lists of illegal grabbers for eviction.
In practice, coordinated action plans exist only for four rivers around Dhaka—Buriganga, Shitalakshya, Turag and Balu. Of these, only the Turag has progressed to a project formulation stage with international assistance, while others remain stuck at research or planning levels.
Initial government plans to cover 14 to 15 rivers were scaled back due to financial and logistical constraints. Rizwana has since said that responsibility for identifying encroachers lies primarily with the Ministry of Shipping, distancing herself from her earlier statements. Critics say this shifting of institutional responsibility undermines the force of her earlier commitments.
Illegal stone extraction in Sylhet presents another stark contrast between official claims and ground realities. Although the government has highlighted crackdowns in Jaflong and Sada Pathar as a success, local estimates suggest that at least 40 million cubic feet of stone were looted within a few months after August 2024, including 10 million cubic feet in Jaflong alone.
At market prices ranging from Tk60 to Tk150 per cubic foot, the total value could exceed Tk2,000 crore. Mobile courts were conducted, but no major syndicates were dismantled. Rizwana herself admitted that while she had once managed to halt stone extraction as an activist, she has been unable to do so as an adviser.
Noise pollution control has followed a similarly fragmented path. Despite new rules setting a legal limit of 100 decibels, hydraulic horns producing up to 120–130 decibels remain widely available across Dhaka through informal networks and illegal imports.
Horn-free and silent zones exist on paper around hospitals, schools and government offices, but enforcement remains weak due to the requirement of magistrate presence for fines. Experts say cultural change cannot be achieved by banning noise on a few roads while allowing the broader system to operate unchanged.
On forests, the government reports some progress. About 10,000 acres of land have been reclaimed since August 2024. But official data still show more than 257,000 acres under illegal occupation by over 160,000 individuals and institutions, with 8,606 cases filed.
Rizwana has said it is unrealistic to expect a 54-year-old problem to be solved in a year and a half, though critics argue that this statement contrasts sharply with her earlier tone of urgency.
Wildlife protection remains another weak point. Elephant sanctuaries in Chunati and Cox’s Bazar have been promised but not implemented. Between September 2024 and January 2026, an estimated 25 wild elephants died in train accidents, habitat conflicts and related incidents. Rizwana has said tree plantations and habitat restoration take time, making immediate solutions unrealistic.
Environmental policies have also had unintended economic consequences. Restrictions on tourism in Saint Martin’s Island, framed as a conservation measure, have reduced income for local residents, many of whom had previously abandoned fishing for tourism-related work.
Researchers warn that conservation without social cushioning risks pushing communities back into environmentally harmful livelihoods.
Ironically, many of the policies Rizwana now struggles to implement were once ideas she championed as a lawyer. In 2008, she advocated for Village Forest Rules under the Forest Act to ensure community participation in forest management.
More than a year into her tenure, those rules remain unimplemented. Meanwhile, new ordinances passed in late 2025 are yet to clarify long-standing jurisdictional disputes between government agencies, particularly over marine protected areas.
Across sectors—plastic, air, rivers, wildlife, forests and tourism—officials repeatedly cite the same barriers: budget deficits, manpower shortages, logistical constraints and weak inter-agency coordination.
Rizwana herself has acknowledged all of these. Yet critics argue that her public messaging continues to emphasise ambition rather than limitation, creating expectations that the current system is structurally incapable of meeting.
Supporters say her tenure must be judged against decades of institutional inertia. Critics counter that bold rhetoric without durable systems risks becoming performative.
For observers, the lingering uncertainty is not about intent but about endurance—whether an activist’s sense of urgency can survive the state’s inertia, or whether it must eventually conform to it.
