The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in the southeast of Bangladesh is unique and attractive to outsiders. It forms a bridge between South Asia and Southeast Asia. From the plains one is amazed to see the picturesque mountain landscapes. The hill indigenous people who are divided into 12 groups exhibit distinct and different cultures. These amazing, amusing, honest and always smiling people seem to be part of nature.

But this mountainous region and its original inhabitants have undergone enormous assault and sufferings due to ill-conceived development initiatives and human greed. Produced and published by the Society for Environment and Human Development (SEHD), The Chittagong Hill Tracts: Life and Nature at Risk presents information, analysis and photographic evidence about how the land, life and nature in the Chittagong Hill Tracts are at risk. Incidents throughout the past half-century have changed the CHT to such a great extent that it no longer remains in its original shape. It is man who has caused enormous damage to this beautiful region.

SEHD publishes this book also to enhance understanding about the CHT's unique legal and administrative system that has no parallel in other parts of Bangladesh; agony and anger of the hill people as they fail to establish their self-rule and control over local resources; hill women's vulnerability and sufferings; and dislocation, disruption and destruction of life and nature in the name of 'development'.