Invisible again : women and social forestry in Bangladesh

Abstract

Social forestry is a participatory approach to managing forest resources that attempts to reconcile a range of ecological, commercial and social objectives. Its emergence in the last decade signals a recognition of the failure of development programmes imposed by government directive and of the need for forests to support increasingly impoverished local populations while supplying timber for international markets. Social forestry in Bangladesh has been planned and implemented through the combined efforts of the Bangladeshi government, international aid donors, especially the Asian Development Bank, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). The weight of development organizations in this coalition led to an explicit commitment to recognizing the role of women in such projects, both as the target group most dependent on forest resources for domestic needs and, for that same reason, as the group most knowledgeable about the forest's capacity for meeting local needs.All the components of Social Forestry Programs were examined in two different villages. One village, Shakipur, is close to the local administrative center, while the other, Barsharchala, is more isolated. In both cases, the government had alienated itself from the local population through an aggressive approach to land appropriation. It therefore entrusted popular mobilization and credit distribution to Proshika, a national NGO. Four major conclusions emerge from this research: (1) benefits to women and other target groups have been marginal at best; (2) development planning treats village populations as largely homogenous, ignoring the existence of entrenched power holders who are able to capture the benefits of these programmes; (3) planners also ignore the specificity of local patterns of land ownership, a key factor in the success of participatory projects; and (4) "bottom up" development is in danger of failing because many areas lack a capacity for spontaneous popular mobilization