'Social forestry needs revamp'
Saturday, 2 August 2008
The government should revamp its present social afforestation programme with the policy and legal frameworks placing the authority to the group of forest users for its management, reports BSS.
Academics, environmentalists, local community leaders and concerned government officials in a deliberation observed that the community based social afforestation that began in the country in the early 1980s is playing a very least role in protecting the forest lands.
About his experience in Madhupur sal forest, senior forest official Shah-e-Alam said, "Social afforestation could not protect the forest, except providing some monetary benefit to the participants."
Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO) of Madhupur M Parvez Rahim also echoed the same view, saying the government's aim to recover natural forests has become difficult, as possession dispute over both public and ancestral forest lands remains a very complex task.
The government initiated the mostly donor supported social afforestation, as a different option to traditional forest management in the backdrop of poor forest coverage of the country and rapid decrease in the forest land due to large population and various socio-economic and socio-political factors.
Under the programme, DoF under the Ministry of Environment and Forest have taken commercial plantation of high yielding plants, vegetable and fruits in the public and private forests in the forest regions of the country with the participation of local community.
According to Syeda Rezwana Hasan of Bangladesh Environ-ment Lawyers Association (BELA), the forests of the country are now facing acute shortage in environmental degradation due to commercial cultivation of pineapple and banana and other hybrid vegetables.
Such commercial farming has damaged the bio-diversity of the forests in addition to endangering the traditional livelihood of the people living in the forests for hundreds of years-called as 'adibashi', she said.
Noted sociologist Sadeka Halim of Dhaka University said, the social afforestation although implied 'bottom-up' approach, but appeared to remain state-oriented, making the participants as beneficiaries, not active agency of change.' A recent study showed that Nepali forests decreased at an annual rate of 1.7 per cent whereas forests and shrub-land together decreased by an annual rate of 0.5 per cent during the period 1978 to 1994. But community forest has reduced the rates of deforestation from 8,000 to 800 hectares per year.
Academics, environmentalists, local community leaders and concerned government officials in a deliberation observed that the community based social afforestation that began in the country in the early 1980s is playing a very least role in protecting the forest lands.
About his experience in Madhupur sal forest, senior forest official Shah-e-Alam said, "Social afforestation could not protect the forest, except providing some monetary benefit to the participants."
Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO) of Madhupur M Parvez Rahim also echoed the same view, saying the government's aim to recover natural forests has become difficult, as possession dispute over both public and ancestral forest lands remains a very complex task.
The government initiated the mostly donor supported social afforestation, as a different option to traditional forest management in the backdrop of poor forest coverage of the country and rapid decrease in the forest land due to large population and various socio-economic and socio-political factors.
Under the programme, DoF under the Ministry of Environment and Forest have taken commercial plantation of high yielding plants, vegetable and fruits in the public and private forests in the forest regions of the country with the participation of local community.
According to Syeda Rezwana Hasan of Bangladesh Environ-ment Lawyers Association (BELA), the forests of the country are now facing acute shortage in environmental degradation due to commercial cultivation of pineapple and banana and other hybrid vegetables.
Such commercial farming has damaged the bio-diversity of the forests in addition to endangering the traditional livelihood of the people living in the forests for hundreds of years-called as 'adibashi', she said.
Noted sociologist Sadeka Halim of Dhaka University said, the social afforestation although implied 'bottom-up' approach, but appeared to remain state-oriented, making the participants as beneficiaries, not active agency of change.' A recent study showed that Nepali forests decreased at an annual rate of 1.7 per cent whereas forests and shrub-land together decreased by an annual rate of 0.5 per cent during the period 1978 to 1994. But community forest has reduced the rates of deforestation from 8,000 to 800 hectares per year.