Essay Example on Rural Dev Generally

Rural Dev Generally it is implicit that the sustainability of rural communities is linked to their level of resilience specifically the ability of community members to develop and engage resources to adapt or maintain current productivity and function when exposed to external shocks Holladay Powell 2013 2016 Magis 2010 This ability builds up over time based on many underlying factors such as community s age distribution food supply livelihood population stability indigenous knowledge and communication capacity The rural communities normally have less resilience than the urban communities citation In Bangladesh 77 of the total population live in the rural areas Most of the forests in Bangladesh are geographically located in rural or remote areas For centuries many people have been living in and around these forests They live in community set up which are widely known as People of these communities are highly dependent on the neighboring forests for their livelihood They collect resources From These communities are considered as a part of the forests Nowadays managing forest with active participation of these communities widely known as community forestry have become popular in many countries In Bangladesh this practice was initiated in 1982 and since then it has been practicing in several forests 

This concept of community forestry have drawn attention of scientists from different interlinked departments such as Forestry Soc NRM Mainly because they realize that ensuring sound forest management excluding these communities from the plan is hardly possible Some of these experts worked on some on But very few research was conducted on the resilience of these communities which is very important Some researches were conducted on aspect But integrating all of dimension was misssing However in Bangladesh the research works on community forestry aspect only cover omuk somuk But this was missing In this study we will measure the resilience of communities of two different types of forests which are located in two different regions of the countries Our aim is to examine how much impact geographic location and forest type have on the resilience of the surrounding communities Forest and forest products have made available major livelihood facilities and many necessities of life to the forest dependent communities and rural poor for centuries According to the World Bank 2002 more than 1 6 billion people throughout the world rely on forests for their livelihoods and some 350 million people depend solely on forests both for their subsistence and incomes 

Another study suggests that over two billion people a third of the world s population use biomass fuels mainly firewood to cook and heat their homes and rely on traditional medicines harvested from forests Arnold Kohlin and Persson 2006 The same study finds that in some 60 developing countries hunting and fishing in forested land supplies over a fifth of people s protein requirements Many rural people living adjacent to forest areas maintain their livelihood on forest resources where forest degradation creates scarcity of these resources and accelerates the poverty and hunger in Bangladesh The situation of natural forest in Bangladesh is not in a balanced condition There is no productive public forest in the northern and central regions of the country This has created acute energy shortage in these regions The per capita consumption of fuelwood 0 1 m3 in Bangladesh is one of the lowest in the world and there is a big shortfall of supply compared to demand the balance of fuelwood requirement being met by farm by products Douglas 1982 Ohlsson 1984 Abedin and Quddus 1989 This supply and demand gap is widening every year If the tree resource is not managed properly on a sustainable yield basis there will be a net deficit of about 3 47 million cubic meter of fuelwood by the year 2013 GOB 1993 In the above discussion it is evident that Bangladesh is an overpopulated country with limited resources 

Though more than 80 percent of the people are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood cultivable land is scarce per capita land holding approx 0 2 ha The natural forest occupies about 18 percent of the land surface but they are unevenly distributed out of the total 64 districts of the country 28 districts have no forests Again most of the forests are devoid of vegetation and severely degraded Forest products essential for basic human needs become scarce and the forest destruction is so high that an unbalanced situation is prevailing in the ecosystem creating frequent floods cyclones draughts earthquakes etc and as a consequence the rural poverty is accelerating in Bangladesh It is also one of the most disaster prone areas in the world A series of disasters including flood cyclonic storms tidal surges droughts tornadoes riverbank erosion earth quake etc occur in Bangladesh regularly and frequently 

That s why rural and forest communities are facing greater exposure to risk and vulnerabilities than at any time before Fisher Chaudhury and Mccusker 2010 There is evidence that local communities depend on forests and associated natural resources to improve their capacity for resilience in such a context Mertz etal 2009 Fisher Chaudhury and Mccusker 2010 Simply community resilience is the ability of a community to bounce back to its operational equilibrium after a hazardous stress This ability builds up over time based on many underlying factors such as community s age distribution food supply livelihood population stability indigenous knowledge and communication capacity Studies of community resilience promise to provide insight into how communities can actively develop the capacity to adapt to and thrive within environments characterised by perpetual change and turbulence Generally it is assumed that the well being of rural communities is linked to their level of resilience specifically the ability of community members to develop and engage resources to adapt or maintain current productivity and function when exposed to external shocks Holladay Powell 2013 2016 Magis