Participation of Local people is necessary in ...

Participation of Local people is necessary in the management of forests in the country and this could only be achieved when two of the basic problems as legal and institutional that give very little benefits to that local inhabitants for forest management and the other political and economic interests which hinder the local peoples rights and benefits. Local people are always ignored and the policies are developed at government level without consultations with the stakeholders as well as these policies are only formulated at the interdepartmental level which is another drawback.
Forestry Policy Resolution of 1955
The first policy of the country which aimed at only to increase the forest area and not address the problems of different forest areas and due to this the degradation of forest continued and due to deterioration of forests there was a huge pressure of timber yield and grazing on remaining forest areas. Another drawback of this policy was the ignorance on afforestation activities and upland forests became rapidly depleted. The ignorance of forest rehabilitation made this an inadequate policy. Ahmed and Mahmood (1998) wrote “this policy failed to play an effective role in monitoring the policy process and policy implementation. The consultation process, if any, remained confined to professional and administrative circles.”
1962 Policy Directive on Forestry, Watershed Management, Range Management and Soil Conservation:
This policy was based on the management of forest for the purpose of revenue generation and this was realized that the and adapted top down approach in which communities were considered as they have no interest in forest management and so they have no stack in this system. Most of the forest areas were nationalized again and whole concern of this policy was to increase the forest areas and its central management. Local communities were deprived from their rights and Central forestry board was accomplishing to achieve these goals. Each forest block was physically fenced and landowners in country were bound to grow trees on their land holdings for their own use. Agriculture department was responsible for the farm forestry and soil conservation was the responsibility of forest department. This policy also aimed at provision of subsidized stoves and kerosene oil for upper areas to reduce the extraction of fuel wood from the forests but due to certain conditions this was not implied and the deterioration process continued.
1975 Decision of the Council of Common Interest
In 1971, Eastern wing of the country was separated as Bangladesh and the new government formulated a new policy for the country. This is fist policy which is considered as people friendly because first time in the history the local representatives from different governmental and non governmental organizations were part of its drafting. The turn back was to handover the “Guzara” Forests to their owners which ...