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Community attitudes toward forest conservation programs through collaborative protected area management in Bangladesh

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Abstract

The formulation of conservation policies with options for creating protected areas is significantly influenced by the social factors of the surrounding communities. Therefore, indigenous knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of the local communities need to be explored during the planning and implementation stages of conservation projects. A government-initiated experiment in co-management was conducted in the Rema-Kalenga Wildlife Sanctuary, Bangladesh. This paper analyzes the attitudes toward conservation by members of local communities living in and around the wildlife sanctuary. Training incentives on alternative income-generating (AIG) activities and allotment of agricultural lands were distributed among the Forest User Groups. It is of interest to policy makers and resource managers whether this technique leads to improved attitudes on the part of local people. Although there were different attitudes toward protected areas and conservation, overall, a favorable attitude of the respondents was observed. The opinions of respondents also varied based on factors such as village position, village dependency level on forest resources, ethnicity and gender. Increase in annual income resulting from the augmented skills by trainings on AIG activities and getting agricultural lands leased from the Forest Department contributed significantly to the variation in respondents’ conservation attitudes. It is suggested that eliminating inequity and inequality in incentive distribution, discovering and launching training on more need-based livelihood activities, and liberalizing the restriction of resource extraction from the protected area by fixing the harvesting limit would encourage the community to be more cordially and actively involved in the conservation efforts of the sanctuary.

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Notes

  1. According to Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005), the four categories of ecosystem services are: provisioning (e.g., food, water, wood & fiber, fuel), regulating (e.g., climate regulation, flood regulation, disease regulation, water purification), cultural (e.g., esthetic, spiritual, educational, recreational), and supporting (nutrient cycling, soil formation, primary production).

  2. The local unit of landholdings; 1 decimal = 40.46 sq m.

  3. Bangladeshi currency unit Taka. US$1 = Tk. 78.00 as of September 2013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forest Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Shinshu University, 8304 Minamiminowa-Mura, Nagano-Ken, 399-4598, Japan

    Mohammad Shaheed Hossain Chowdhury, Shigeyuki Izumiyama & Masao Koike

  2. School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Chloe Gudmundsson & Sharif Ahmed Mukul

  3. Department of Zoology, Noakhali Government College, Noakhali, Bangladesh

    Nahid Nazia

  4. School of Forest Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, 80101, Joensuu, Finland

    Md. Parvez Rana

  5. School of International Tropical Forestry, University Malaysia Sabah, 88400, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia

    Nur Muhammed

  6. Department of Forestry & Environmental Science, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, 3114, Bangladesh

    Mohammed Redowan

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  1. Mohammad Shaheed Hossain Chowdhury
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  2. Chloe Gudmundsson
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Correspondence to Mohammad Shaheed Hossain Chowdhury.

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Chowdhury, M.S.H., Gudmundsson, C., Izumiyama, S. et al. Community attitudes toward forest conservation programs through collaborative protected area management in Bangladesh. Environ Dev Sustain 16, 1235–1252 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-014-9524-y

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