NGOs’ role in improving social forestry practice:does it help to increase livelihood, sustainability and optimum land use in Bangladesh?

At present, encroachment rate is too high and increasing alarmingly that causes environmental degradation as well as low forest cover and productivity in Bangladesh. Rural poverty accelerates the encroachment in meeting the demand of dwelling place and forest products. The natural encroached and degraded forest is under public management regime while a substantial amount of marginal land belongs to other semi-public agencies such as Roads and Highways, Water Development board and so on. Due to lack of initiatives and proper management these lands have been left unused and under utilized. In contrast, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are with appropriate management structure and technologies to utilize these lands in reducing poverty and enhance rural livelihood. In order to rehabilitate these encroached forests non-governmental organizations have been found to be very active and successful. They have added a new dimension in the forest management, which has ensured participation of the community people and protection of the forest, no matter artificial planting or natural. The study attempted to evaluate the social forestry activities of Four large NGOs namely BRAC, PROSHIKA, CARITAS, CARE. The study also discussed the public social forestry activities to find out the nature of the program and the involvement of the local people. By following a framework of common partnership between public and private management systems, the issue ‘property right conflicts’ has been resolved and enhanced rural life as well as created scope of utilizing the marginal lands. As an outcome of this common partnership 33,472 km roadside plantation, 53,430 ha reforestation activities and so on have been carried out in last two decades. The achievement of NGOs’ partnership in managing forest resource seems to be effective towards poverty irradiation and better livelihood.