Ecosystem servicespreferences of Environmental actors in Bangladesh

Shampa Biswas

Institute of Silviculture,Department of Forest and Soil Sciences

Universityof Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria

shampa.boku@gmail.com

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Forest resource in developing countrieslike Bangladesh is a unique gift from time immemorial. Inancient times, people were fully dependent upon forest for their livelihood andsurvival through fulfill their fundamental needs like food, shelter, clothes,medicine. The socio-economic and cultural life of forest dwellers in Bangladesh is closely related to forest.Through time, humankind has also destroyed tracts of rainforest in Bangladesh, that otherwise act as a 'carbonsink', absorbing greenhouse gases.?As a result of the increased trapped gases time by time, the atmospherewarms; seas expand and sea levels rise, causing ocean currents to alter.?With everyhectare of forest lost to agricultural expansion, urbanization and logging, theflow of forest environmental goods and services is diminished. This lossrepresents an uncalculated risk which is multiplied in the context of climatechange. This risk is unknowingly borne by many stakeholders (such as thepublic, industrial and agricultural sectors, water and power utilities and manyothers) that depend on forest environmental services (FES).Mitigating this risk and adapting to climate change requires a strategicapproach to securing ecosystem services.

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According to the demand of global climatechange, ecosystem services draw increasing attention from the public andprivate sectors to foster sustainable forest management (SFM). Because forestsprovide lots of ecosystem services like biodiversity, carbon sequestration,water cycling and scenic beauty. Global scientists think that carbon projectswithin naturally managed projects provide not only environmental benefitscompared to conventional timber logging, but also enlarge the productsportfolio of sustainable managed forests. In Bangladesh, the idea of ecosystem service isnot well known and described till now. As the requirement of SFM isparticipation of multiple stakeholders either for benefit sharing or indecision making, so the provision of ecosystem services based on principles ofSFM are subject to complex decision making process. It is very requisite toknow the preferences of environmental actors for ecosystem services in decisionmaking for SFM. The establishment of market for ecosystem services might affordprofits for local landowners and forest conservationists.? It would ensure the preferences of environmentalactors about the economic significanceof the global loss of biological diversity relevant with ecosystem services.

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