CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Hawlader, Alamgir |
|---|---|
| Title | Mangrove Governance and Resource Conflicts: A Case Study of the Sundarbans Mangrove Forest in Bangladesh |
| Summary | This thesis paper focuses on the conflicting role of the Government and the local mangrove-dependent communities in conserving the world's largest mangrove forest – the Sundarbans Mangrove Forest (SMF) in Bangladesh. Specifically, this thesis paper aims to investigate why active resource conflicts exists between stakeholders in the Sundarbans area and how such conflicts affect the sustainable governance of the Sundarbans. The study uses the concepts of co-management arrangements in the domain of the theory of property rights to investigate the research questions. The co-management arrangements essentially recognize the roles of local communities in dealing with resource conflicts by proving them decision-making powers. Due to its underlying capacity in managing resource-related conflicts, the study finds co-management theoretically most relevant to its research aims. As a method of empirical analysis, the study applies exploratory case study research in two villages near the Sundarbans Reserve Forest area, namely, Pathor Khali and Munshiganji. Using semi-structured interview techniques, the study performed 27 Key Informant Interviews from the case areas which include 20 local resource users, 3 Forest Department officials, and 4 NGO workers. A thorough analysis of the collected data reveals that the local mangrove-dependent communities face severe exploitation by the Forest Department and other government agencies in the form of rampant corruption and harassment. Despite participatory forest management arrangements for the Sundarbans are in place, the local mangrove resource users do not have any decision-making powers. In fact, local users are not allowed to enter the protected area without permit license and entry pass. Findings show that all the respondents, who are local resource users, pay, on average $6.25 to forest officials to get an entry pass every time. This rate is at least two times higher than the prescribed rate of the government. The study also finds that 80 percent of respondents, who usually enter the protected for resource collections, experienced kidnaping by pirates within the last one year. Those who were kidnapped paid, on average, $750 to free themselves from the pirates. Surprisingly, they received, namely, no assistance from Forest offices, security agencies, or locally elected politicians. Although, 85 percent of the respondents are willing to participate in the co-management activities for the sustainable governance of the Sundarbans, the presence of distrusts and frustrations over mangrove resource use remains very active among the local resource-dependent communities. The non-cooperation from the responsible state agencies is a major obstacle for efficiently implementing co-management arrangements which the study thinks is a crucial challenge for long-term conflict mitigation between the stakeholders and the better governance of the Sundarbans. |
| Supervisor | Folz, Attila and Antypas, Alexios |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/hawlader_alamgir.pdf |
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