Database - United Nations in Bangladesh

In the last People's Report (People's Report on Bangladesh Environment 2001), we published a separate volume containing data
on environmental issues. The data were gathered from a wide range of sources, including the database of the Bangladesh Bureau
of Statistics (BBS), journals, and research reports, as well as from individual researchers. Our modest effort was appreciated by
many. We therefore continued our efforts in compiling data on environmental issues and prepared this volume of environmental
database for People's Report 2002-2003.
In this volume of environmental database, we have not reproduced the data already reported in the Volume II of People's
Report 2001. Only new data have been included in this volume. The data have been presented in ten chapters and a format similar
to that in the People's Report 2001, has been followed. In the last People's Report, we relied a great deal on data compiled by the
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS). This time, we gathered data primarily from other sources, including journals, research
reports, conference proceedings, and data published by different government agencies and non-government research
organizations. Like last time, we put significant effort to find out any inconsistency in the reported data and tried to verify the data,
that we thought inconsistent, with the original source. This was not an easy task and our research officers worked very hard to
verify the authenticity of the data. In some cases, we decided not to report some of the data could not be verified. We would like to
point out that we have not included data that are very voluminous in nature and not suitable for publication in print format. Besides,
in most cases, such data are available in suitable versions from other sources. The Department of Public Health Engineering-
British Geological Survey (DPHE-BGS) database on groundwater quality, including arsenic concentration, in Bangladesh is an
example.
We are indeed very grateful to all who provided us data and helped us collect, check and re-check those. Our special thanks to
the Unnayan Shamannay research staff for their efforts and hard-work in collecting, compiling and checking the database. We also
express our sincere gratitude to the specialists of the Programme Management Unit (PMU) of SEMP for encouraging us in this
endeavour.