Evaluating Collaborative Management within the National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries of Bangladesh

Abstract

The protected area system of Bangladesh in March 2017 comprised 17 national parks covering 45,740 hectares and 21 wildlife sanctuaries covering 394,053 hectares. The Government of Bangladesh introduced collaborative management in these reserves in three successive, expanding phases undertaken between 2003 up until the present time. During this period, the successive programmes introduced an elaborate collaborative management system. This paper evaluates this collaborative management system as well as the protected area management arrangements being promoted, comprising: (i) the Co-management Council, (ii) the Co-management Committee, (iii) the People's Forum, and (iv) sub-village institutional bodies including the Community Patrol Groups and the Forest User Groups (or the Village Conservation Forums). It assesses the management interventions and the effectiveness of the collaborative management system to implement an effective protected area programme. The review indicates that the current organisation and mandate of the protected area authorities precludes them from being effective partners in collaborative management, lacking dedicated staff in both the outreach and livelihood agendas, which severely undermines their participation in collaborative management. This paper recommends that the protected area authority needs to be strengthened and reorganised, in order to play a leading role in village engagement-and a key leading agency in the higher level collaborative management bodies.

Effects of Land-Related Policies on Deforestation in a Protected Area: The Case Study of Rema-Kalenga Wildlife Sanctuary, Bangladesh

“…This is probably due to the fact that the forest plantation program of fast-growing tree species was taken up, to mitigate the demand for timber and fuel wood [32]. The government's twenty-year Forestry Sector Master Plan (FSMP 1993(FSMP -2013 was approved in the 1990s, whose main objective was to bring 20% of the country's land under tree cover [8]. Extensive plantation trials of commercial timber species, the Pinus, Eucalyptus and Acacia tree species, were undertaken in Bangladesh PAs [32].…”

“…In Bangladesh, national parks and wildlife sanctuaries have served as PAs for a long time [8]. Since national parks and wildlife sanctuaries were introduced in Bangladesh in 1960, their numbers have increased slowly [9].…”

“…Several forest policies (Forest Policy 1894, Forest Act 1927, Forest Policy 1955, Forest Policy 1962, Wildlife Preservation Act 1974, and Forest Policy 1979) have been enacted to guide the management of the forests [17,18]. After gaining independence in 1971, the Bangladeshi government formulated the first forest policy in 1979, the second in 1994, and the third in 2016 [8,19].…”

Evaluating co-management in the Sundarbans mangrove forest of Bangladesh: success and limitations from local forest users’ perspectives

“…Following that, the Sundarbans Management Project (SMP; 2017-2022) supported it, and it is now supported by the Sustainable Forest and Livelihoods Project (SUFAL;-2024Haque 2022, Begum et al 2023). Although there have been some evaluations of the comanagement of the Sundarbans, the majority of research has concentrated on assessing the effectiveness of the approach in relation to livelihood outcomes (Hoq 2014, Abdullah et al 2016, Razzak et al 2020, Yeasmin et al 2022, conservation goals (Uddin and Parr 2018, Nishat and Chowdhury 2019, Pal et al 2021, Rahman 2022a), community participation (Sadath et al 2017, Ahmed andBartlett 2018), equity (Mollick et al 2023), and effective governance (Roy et al 2015, Hawlader 2018, Islam et al 2019, Begum et al 2021, Mollick et al 2022, Rahman 2022b). The preponderance of antecedent studies have accorded precedence to the criteria associated with either the process or the outcome.…”

The Era of Collaborative Management: Navigating the Challenges Faced by Indonesian Local Governments

“…The term "collaborative management" refers to a style of management in which several different stakeholders, including governmental organizations, private businesses, and communities, work together to accomplish shared objectives (Fatmawati et al, 2022). Local governments around the world are increasingly turning to collaborative management (Jae-Hyuck & Yoon-Hoon, 2017; Uddin & Parr, 2018;Winter et al, 2021), as they face an increasing number of complex challenges that cannot be solved by traditional bureaucratic approaches (Jae-Hyuck & Yoon-Hoon, 2017; Uddin & Parr, 2018;Winter et al, 2021). Collaborative management is defined as the practice of facilitating training and collaborating with multiple actors to tackle problems that cannot or cannot bereadily solved by a single organization (Kerret & Menahem, 2016;Matsiliza, 2016;McGuire & Silvia, 2010), including government agencies, private organizations, and communities, to achieve common goals.…”