The Perimeter of Conflict: Geospatial Vulnerability Assessment of Conservation Areas Under Dhaka's Detailed Area Plan (2022–2035)

Joy Biswas

Dhaka’s unrelenting developmental pressure, managed under the strategic blueprint of the Detailed Area Plan (DAP) 2022–2035, has exposed a critical paradox: the policy commitment to environmental conservation is systematically undermined by rampant, quantifiable ecological encroachment. This comprehensive study utilizes advanced Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) framework to generate a Geospatial Vulnerability Index (VI) across the mandated 200-meter risk perimeter surrounding Ecological Conservation Areas (ECAs)—Waterbodies, Forest Areas, Agricultural Zones, and Open Spaces.1 The analysis unearths a systemic regulatory failure, defining an estimated 11,000 hectares of conservation land that falls directly within the quantifiable Conflict Overlap zone.1 The encroachment is overwhelmingly driven by the widespread conversion of Agricultural Zone land and the aggressive expansion of high-economic-rent Mixed-Use Residential/Commercial zones.2 Critically, nearly 70% of this threatened area registers a High or Critical Vulnerability score (VI greater than or equal to 50%), a direct spatial manifestation of the economic forces and infrastructural pressures—such as proposed Transport Communication—that supersede conservation mandates.1 These findings confirm that environmental degradation in Dhaka follows predictable, economically rational pathways that institutional enforcement has failed to contain.4 We propose a decisive policy pathway built on institutionalizing inter-agency coherence, imposing strategic economic disincentives (conservation taxes), and implementing an adaptive, tiered governance model for the 200m buffer to successfully bridge the persistent chasm between planning policy and spatial reality.