Ukhiya, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

The cylinder sits in the corner of the tent. Small. Practical. Unremarkable to anyone who has never had to live without it. But for Setera Begum and her husband Mohammad Zubayer, who live in Camp 4 in Ukhiya, that cylinder is the difference between a safe kitchen and a dangerous one. Between a child breathing clean air and a child breathing smoke. Between peace with neighbors and conflict over trees.

Now, that cylinder may go silent.

Funding shortages are threatening the LPG, liquefied petroleum gas, supply program that has served nearly 250,000 Rohingya families across 33 camps in Ukhiya and Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar. Sources confirm that LPG supply has already been suspended in Bhashan Char. If the funding crisis deepens, the same fate could reach the mainland camps, pulling hundreds of thousands of families back to the only alternative they know: the forest.

Setera Begum remembers those early days clearly. When she fled Myanmar in 2017 and arrived at the camp, there was no gas. There was nothing. To cook a meal, she had to walk into the hills, cut branches, carry wood home on her back, and light a fire inside a tent. The smoke filled the small space. Her children coughed. And whenever she ventured too deep into the trees, she risked confrontation with local villagers who had lived alongside those forests for generations.

"There was always tension," she said. "The local people did not want us taking their wood. We understood. But we had no choice."

Her husband Mohammad Zubayer described the daily arithmetic of survival from those years. Every day, roughly five kilograms of wood were needed just to cook for one family. Multiply that across hundreds of thousands of families, and the scale of destruction becomes clear.

Between 2017 and 2018, according to the Bangladesh Forest Department, approximately 7,000 acres of forest were damaged in the Ukhiya and Teknaf area. Among the losses were 2,027 acres of planted forest and 4,136 acres of natural forest. Landslide risks increased sharply. Biodiversity collapsed in affected areas. The habitat of the Asian elephant shrank. At the peak of the crisis, an estimated 900 tons of firewood were being consumed every single day just for cooking.

The damage was not abstract. It was visible from the hillsides.

In 2018, the “Safe Plus” program began distributing LPG to Rohingya camps as part of an effort to protect both the environment and the people living inside it. The results were significant. Deforestation slowed. Smoke-related illness in children decreased. Conflicts over firewood became less frequent. Women no longer needed to walk deep into hills to gather fuel. The forest began, slowly, to recover.

Zubayer’s words carry the weight of someone who has lived through both realities. “If the gas stops, we go back to suffering. We will have to cut trees again. We will have arguments with the local people again. The children will get sick from the smoke again.”

The fear in his voice is not exaggerated. It is the voice of someone who knows exactly what the alternative looks like, because he has already lived it.

Environmental experts and humanitarian organizations working in Cox’s Bazar have been consistent in their warning: if the LPG program collapses, the consequences will not stay inside the camps. The forests of Ukhiya and Teknaf will bear the impact directly. So will the communities that depend on them.

International funding for Rohingya humanitarian programs has been declining in recent years as donor fatigue sets in and global attention shifts elsewhere. The LPG program, which requires sustained financial support to maintain supply chains and cylinder distribution, is among those now facing uncertainty.

A cylinder of gas costs very little in the context of international aid budgets. But its absence carries a cost that is far larger: in trees, in children’s lungs, in community tension, and in the quiet dignity of a woman who no longer has to beg the forest for permission to feed her family.

Setera Begum has lived through enough loss already. She does not ask for much. Just the small, practical cylinder in the corner of her tent. Just the ability to cook a meal without harming anyone to do it.

She should not have to ask twice.