Abstract
Decentralize in forest management policies towards more people-oriented approaches has become major policy trends in many of the world’s developing countries during the last decade. However, the power of important actors to misuse the participatory forestry (PF) approach for their self-interests has been stated as a main problem to success. So, this study attempted to identify the most powerful actors and the extent at which they influence the outcomes of PF, and also to measure the impact of PF on livelihood assets of participants. The empirical data were collected from the well-established PF programs at Madhupur Sal forests area of Bangladesh. The results showed that the forest department (FD) proved itself as the most powerful and influential actor in every element of power analysis in PF. Regarding to livelihood analysis, the results revealed that the overall value of participants’ livelihood assets was 0.85 and it was significantly differed from the non-participants value of 0.66. However, the development of human, physical and financial assets was not indicating a decent improvement like as natural and social assets of participants. So, it is necessary to pay more attention to boost up participants’ human and financial assets through intensive training and adopting proper tree-crop production techniques, and also ensuring alternative livelihoods approaches to the local people. In addition, the local government will need to pay more emphasis on constructing village roads and infrastructure so as to enhance physical assets of the local people. Finally, the study would recommend promoting PF with apposite government facilities and also empowering local participants in order to balance the power among different actors, and this will facilitate the participants in governing all of their development activities efficiently.
Highlights
Forest resources and its management are increasingly observed to play a role in rural development, providing the resources necessary to drive local poor livelihoods improvement and poverty alleviation strategies (Islam & Sato, 2012a; Islam et al, 2012, 2013)
A total of 20 actors were identified in Madhupur Sal forests area who were directly or indirectly involved in participatory forestry (PF) program
The results showed that the forest department in the beat officer occurred the most powerful actors in all three elements of power analysis (Table 1)
Summary
Forest resources and its management are increasingly observed to play a role in rural development, providing the resources necessary to drive local poor livelihoods improvement and poverty alleviation strategies (Islam & Sato, 2012a; Islam et al, 2012, 2013). The experiences of people-oriented forest management throughout the world have evidence that decentralize and devolution policies yield benefits for local people, but in realities there are lots of limiting factors (Larson & Ribot, 2007; Ribot, 2004). This approach is characterized by many actors due to the economic, ecological and social functions and values that forests delivers. All actors are important in forest management and their cooperation are needed for sustainable forest management; often the state showed the most dominant and strong role over other actors (Krott, 2005; Devkota, 2010; Barrow et al, 2002)
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