Modeling of freshwater wetland management strategies for building the public awareness at local level in Bangladesh

Md. Islam () and Daisuke Kitazawa

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, 2013, vol. 18, issue 6, 869-888

Abstract: Bangladesh has a large aerial extent of freshwater wetlands for her deltaic characteristics. In 1970, the total area of wetlands in Bangladesh is estimated to be 70000–80000 km 2 , approximately, i.e., 50 % of total national land area. In the recent years, most of these wetlands are being lost and degraded primarily because of flood control projects, irrigation and agricultural activities and others human interference. Unfortunately, over the last three decades in the name of wetland development, local habitats were not taken care of. In this paper, the stakeholder and scenario analyses are employed for measuring public views towards wetlands degradation in Bangladesh. Involvement of stakeholders helps reconcile their different conflicting interests in wetlands, hence creating a common understanding about the problem under study. An exploratory scenario analysis illustrates different themes fulfilled by the wetlands and their associated services in case study Chalan Beel. The Chalan Beel once covered an area of approximately 651,230 acres in 1967. Currently, the permanent flooded area of the Chalan Beel has been reduced to about 18,120 acres. The scenarios show that most of the wetlands in Bangladesh are converted into agricultural lands, settlements, roads, and highways. Aquatic plants and animals are lost and endangered due to human interference and natural disturbance. The government, policymakers and some private organizations are trying to design suitable policy for wetland management but they are not able to reach this goal. It is observed that the local and national policies are facing complexities to create an effective regime to set aside the wetlands management policy in Bangladesh. In this context, this paper proposed an Increased Public Awareness (IPA) policy model that could be pathways for both short and long-term solutions of wetlands degradation in developing nations like Bangladesh. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013

Keywords: Wetland; DPSIR concept; Public awareness; Policy modeling; Bangladesh (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11027-012-9396-0 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:masfgc:v:18:y:2013:i:6:p:869-888

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11027

DOI: 10.1007/s11027-012-9396-0

Access Statistics for this article

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change is currently edited by Robert Dixon

More articles in Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().