Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
conservation and protection of government forests, and limited powers for private for-
ests (FAO 2000). After independence in 1971, teak was identified as the main species
for plantation and “taungya” agroforestry system (the latter system is comparable to the
Indonesian system discussed below). In 1989, the 1927 version of the forest act was
amended for extending authority over “any [Government-owned] land suitable for
afforestation” (FAO 2000). Bangladesh has further a long tradition of tree growing in
homesteads and homegardens like elsewhere in Southeast Asia (e.g., Ahmed et al.
2003). Likewise tree growing in the form of traditional forestry has been practiced in
the form of village forests, tea and rubber gardens and shifting cultivation systems in
hill forest (Islam 1998). Whereas in present times homegardens cover only about 2.3
percent of the land (1995 data; Jensen 1995), village forests play a more important role
supplying 80 to 82 percent of the forest products in villages (Douglas 1981 cited in
Forestry Master Plan 1992). It is estimated that these forests cover about 270,000ha
(Forestry Master Plan 1992) containing, amongst others, bamboo, palms, and trees (for
fruit, fuelwood, construction, shade, and other multiple purposes). Nevertheless increas-
ing population densities, logging and land use conversion- with shifting cultivation
(Islam 1998) and poor people's dependence on natural resources (FAO 2000) being
identified as the main cause of deforestation-resulted in a substantial decline in the
country's total forest cover. Decades of traditional forest management, based on forest
policy guidelines of 1894, 1955 and 1962, proved to be ineffective causing a drastic net
loss in forest resource cover (Muhammed et al. 2005). This trend started to change with
the introduction of social forestry as a strategy of poverty alleviation and socio-
economic development in the early 1980s. In 1994, Bangladesh adopted a new National
Forest Policy with emphasis on people-oriented programs to conserve natural resources,
preserve existing values and to maximize benefits to local people (FAO 2000). Based
on a field survey in 2003, Muhammed et al. (2005) report that thousands of poor farm-
ers have benefited from forest expansion since the mid-1980s through different social
forestry plantations including woodlots or block plantations (30,666ha), agroforestry
(7,738 ha), strip plantation (48,420 km), and village afforestation (7,421 ha). Yet, at the
same time, they refer to various shortcomings in the social forestry programme making
its participants skeptical and, hence, preventing full exploitation of the social forestry
benefits. Moreover the area under tree cover further declined from about 14.9 percent
under public forest and another 1.8 percent under village forests in 1996 (FAO 2000) to
a total of 6.7 percent forest cover in 2005 (FAO 2006b, Table 1).
Indonesia
In Indonesia , small-scale tree growing has traditionally been practiced spontane-
ously by most households throughout the archipelago in the form of village forests
(hutan rakyat), village forest gardens (talun) or homegardens (talun-kebun, pekarangan).
Yet, forest management and tree growing have also been introduced intentionally
particularly in areas where forest resources have been affected by mounting popula-
tion pressure like on the island of Java. For example, Java's teak ( Tectona grandis )
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