Is provisioning services assessment a tool for forest dependency estimation in Coastal Bangladesh? (Pages 24-29)

Abstract

Coastal community of Bangladesh tremendously depends on the provisioning services such as food, timber, wood etc. from the forest. The objective of this study is to evaluate the potentials of provisioning services assessment as a tool for the estimation of forest dependency in coastal Bangladesh. A literature review was conducted to identify the coastal forest ecosystem services which were validated by a checklist survey. Moreover, face to face questionnaire interview was conducted among 105 randomly selected coastal community respondents in Dhulasar union (three villages i.e. Char Gongamoti, Char Chapli, and Char Kauwa) of Patuakhali, Bangladesh. This study then identified all of the ecosystem services provided by the coastal forest of this area. Furthermore, the average monthly resource extraction potential from the coastal forest i.e. monetary value of provisioning services was calculated around 4000 tk month person. The study reveals that average monthly average income per household of the community was almost close to the calculated monthly average provisioning services from the forest. For instance; around 15% respondents’ monthly income was 2000 to 5000 tk person -1 and around 45% respondents’ monthly income was 5500 to 8000 tk -1 person . Hence, monetary value of the provisioning services estimates defined the level of dependency of the coastal people on forest. Consequently, the study showed that, the accurate assessment of the provisioning services might be a tool to determine the forest dependency in the coastal community. Therefore, this study provides a policy tool to the decision makers for determining the forest dependency estimates through ecosystem services assessment.