On Sustainable Development of Social Forestry in Bangladesh: Experiences from Sal (Shorea Robusta) Forests

Abstract

Sustainability in forestry is a complex amalgam of trade-offs among its various dimensions and there is no easy route to achieve sustainable development. It is important that policy process and implementation strategy of these policies should be based on sound information about these trade-offs. There is a growing consensus amongst key forest decision-makers in Bangladesh that traditional forestry is needed to make the transition to more sustainable forestry, which is likely to involve local people in forest management. As a result, the government has initiated a social forestry program from 1981 with the assistance of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) loan and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) grant and operated mainly in Sal forest areas. The most important objective of this program is to protect, manage, and develop forests in a sustainable way by involving local communities. Although several studies have focused on the management issues of social forestry, none of these studies has evaluated the indicators of sustainable social forestry. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the criteria of sustainable development of social forestry in Bangladesh. The study is based on primary cross-sectional data collected using the multistage stratified sampling technique. In total, 581 social forestry farmers were selected randomly and interviewed using a pre-tested questionnaire. The study evaluated some important components of sustainable development and identified the following conditions of social forestry in Bangladesh:

(i) almost all the components of sustainable development of social forestry, although not at the aspiration level, were at good condition;

(ii) participants were interested and committed to work with Forest Department in developing social forestry;

(iii) they had been utilizing both hard and soft technology in practicing social forestry, although there exists ample scope of development;

(iv) income of participants after involving in social forestry had increased, although not at satisfactory level; and

(v) process of producing social and material goods had been under progress.

However, there exist plenty of scopes for sustainable social forestry development through improving the sustainable development components more carefully.