The lush green hills of the Chattogram Hill Tracts (CHT), known for their dense forests, flowing streams and rich biodiversity, are increasingly facing the harsh realities of climate change and environmental degradation.

Deforestation, drying water sources, soil erosion and deadly landslides have become recurring threats in three hill districts -Rangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarban, prompting the government to roll out a series of initiatives aimed at restoring ecological balance and strengthening climate resilience.

According to the Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs, extensive afforestation programmes, watershed management activities and climate-resilient infrastructure projects have been taken to address mounting environmental vulnerabilities.

Officials say the initiatives are designed not only to restore degraded forests and protect hill slopes, but also to safeguard the livelihoods of indigenous communities whose lives remain closely tied to the fragile hill ecosystem.

Under the government’s Election Manifesto 2026, authorities have set targets to plant thousands of fruit-bearing, forest and medicinal saplings during the 2025-26 fiscal year.

The ministry said 80,000 saplings will be planted in Rangamati, 82,250 in Khagrachhari and another 100,000 in Bandarban as part of the afforestation drive.

Besides,  the Chittagong Hill Tracts Development Board has launched a broader plantation programme under the Prime Minister’s “One Child, One Tree” pledge, which forms part of a nationwide initiative to plant 2.5 billion trees over five years.

Under the scheme, the board plans to plant 500,000 trees across 26 upazilas in the three hill districts over the next five years. Activities to plant 25,000 trees have already begun during the current fiscal year, according to official documents.

Authorities believe the plantation drives will help stabilise vulnerable hill slopes, restore degraded forest areas and reduce the growing risks posed by climate-induced disasters.

To tackle the growing risks of landslides and soil erosion, the development board has adopted two separate projects titled “Construction of Climate-Resilient Infrastructure to Prevent Landslide Disasters in Rangamati Hill District” and “Construction of Irrigation Infrastructure Including Dams in Different Upazilas for Agricultural Development in Bandarban Hill District.”

The document said that bamboo plantation programmes have also been introduced in all three hill districts to protect vulnerable slopes from erosion and landslides.

Meanwhile, under the supervision of the Chittagong Hill Tracts Regional Council, water supply activities are being implemented in nine upazilas through the “Climate Resilient Livelihoods Improvement and Watershed Management in the CHT Sector Project,” financed jointly by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the government of Bangladesh.

Officials concerned in the Environment Ministry said the implementation of these projects would play an effective role in addressing environmental crises in the hill region, particularly deforestation, land degradation, drought and landslides linked to climate change.

They said  preserving the ecological balance of the Chattogram Hill Tracts remains a priority as the region continues to face increasing environmental vulnerability due to changing weather patterns and unsustainable land use practices.

However, the environmental situation in the CHT has deteriorated significantly in recent decades due to a combination of climate change and aggressive human activities. Deforestation has emerged as a critical threat, driven by commercial logging, infrastructure expansion, and unplanned tourism development.

The massive loss of forest cover has severely destabilised the hilly terrain. Consequently, the topsoil has loosened, leading to a catastrophic rise in landslides during the heavy monsoon downpours, which frequently result in the loss of life and property.

Furthermore, the extensive degradation of natural watersheds has caused mountain streams and fresh springs to dry up, triggering severe drinking water shortages for remote communities during the dry season.

Traditional shifting cultivation, known as Jhum farming, is also facing disruption as the loss of fertile land forces shorter fallow cycles, further depleting the soil.

Additionally, rising regional temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall patterns have altered local agricultural yields and threatened endemic biodiversity, pushing rare species toward extinction.

Officials said to address this ecological decline, there is an urgent need for sustainable land governance that integrates the traditional eco-centric knowledge of indigenous communities with robust environmental protection laws, ensuring that development projects do not come at the cost of the region's fragile ecology.