Reckoning social forestry in Bangladesh: policy and plan versus implementation

Abstract

The history of scientific forest management in Bangladesh dates back to the nineteenth century with defined forest policies and laws. Due to various socio-economic and socio-political factors, forest cover of the country reduced drastically and all such policy initiatives proved ineffective. Although traditional forest management objectives covered a wide range from economic benefit to ecological stability, these have never been attained fully. Huge population and limited land area compelled policy makers to think about alternatives to traditional forest management. One alternative, social forestry, was introduced in Bangladesh in early 1980s and has proved to be extremely successful. While traditional forest management resulted in a net loss of forest resource cover, social forestry on the other hand, is playing a vital role in the expansion of forest cover (40,387 ha of new forest cover and 48,420 km new strip plantation since the mid-1980s) benefiting thousands of poor people. Results show that during last four years (2000-2003) more than 23,000 individuals benefited from the final felling of different social forestry plantations (woodlot, agroforestry and strip plantation). This generated a total income of US $ 5.6 million (hereafter mill) for the Government and US $ 5.3 mill for participants plus US $ 1.2 mill for the Tree Farming Fund (TFF)- a 10 % depository reserve to sustain the practice in the long run. Although average individual final returns (US $ 223 person-1)