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

Mohammad Chowdhury (), Chloe Gudmundsson, Shigeyuki Izumiyama, Masao Koike, Nahid Nazia, Md. Rana, Sharif Mukul, Nur Muhammed and Mohammed Redowan

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2014, vol. 16, issue 6, 1235-1252

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. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Biodiversity conservation; Protected area; Stakeholders; Forest User Group; Bangladesh (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10668-014-9524-y

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