Rohingyas, volunteering as Elephant Response Team (ERT) members in the giant Kutupalong refugee site, will be taking part in events in the settlement in Cox’s Bazar district, on Tuesday to highlight International Day for Biological Diversity.

The ERTs were formed and trained under a joint project by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and its partner, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Bangladesh to reduce incidents involving elephants coming into conflict with refugees in the world’s largest refugee settlement, reports the UNB.

Since the Rohingya influx into Bangladesh last August, there have been at least 13 deaths resulting from human-elephant incidents in the main Kutupalong-Balukhali refugee settlement, said the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.

Some 350 Elephant Response Team members will travel from 3 different areas in the camp to congregate and take part in rallies, said the UNHCR on Monday.  

ERTs of Camps 1, 3, 4 and 17, carrying banners with messages on environmental awareness and biodiversity conservation, will travel from camp 5, which begins at 11:00am.

The colourful procession will move again, ending at the bamboo made elephant watchtower in Camp 3.

Huge bamboo elephants, created by the refugees, will also be used as part of the event.  

Officials representing the Bangladesh Forest Department and the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner’s Office (RRRC) will join the event.  

The highly congested refugee site, which houses around 600,000 refugees who fled Myanmar, used to be forest land but is now crowded with tens of thousands of refugee shelters and services.

The site lies along one of Asian elephants’ main migratory routes between Myanmar and Bangladesh.

Asian elephants are a critically endangered species in Bangladesh, thought to number just 268, said the UNHCR.     

The project is part of a programme by UNHCR and IUCN, working closely with the government authorities, aimed at mitigating some of the environmental impacts linked to the establishment of refugee settlements in Cox’s Bazar. 

Other plans include carrying out environmental education and awareness among refugee and the host communities on the importance of forest resources as well as taking steps to improve the environment in the settlement area and nearby surroundings.

Advocacy will be conducted for reforestation programme, to ensure that natural resources and a shared environment are better protected.

While there is a growing recognition that biological diversity is a global asset of tremendous value to present and future generations, the number of species is being significantly reduced by certain human activities, according to the United Nations.

The Convention on Biological Diversity is the international legal instrument for ‘the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources’ that has been ratified by 196 nations, said the UN.