USAID's Response: Environment

Conservation, Conflicts and Environmental Governanace

USAID has played a pioneering role in protecting and restoring Bangladesh’s natural resources in a manner that simultaneously promotes income and livelihood growth for the rural poor while introducing and advancing good governance practices.  While conservation of natural resources is central to the USAID’s approach, the program focuses on expanding broad-based economic opportunities at a landscape level (a landscape includes a core conservation area; the associated habitats, ecosystems and buffer zone, and the social, economic and human systems in those areas).  USAID’s strategy empowers poor people by giving them a central role in resource management and by addressing the fundamental issues of inequality and risk.  In addition, USAID strongly promotes a transparent process of environmental governance by ensuring a participatory, multi-stakeholder approach to resource management. USAID has developed a “co-management” model, which devolves management authorities to local communities, whose lives are directly or independently dependent on the natural capital.  Through this model the sustainable management of the nation’s natural resource base is becoming the joint responsibility of both local communities and the central government.  Bangladesh’s current Poverty Reduction Strategy has embraced co-management for sustainable management of the environment.

Integrated Protected Area Co-management

To this end, USAID/Bangladesh is presently implementing the Integrated Protected Area Co-management (IPAC) project. IPAC, a $13 million 5-year project launched in June 2008, is scaling-up natural resource co-management at the policy and operational level by achieving recognition, acceptance and integration of this approach by the Government of Bangladesh (GOB) into its management tactics.  The overall IPAC objective is to promote and institutionalize an integrated Protected Area (PA) co-management system for sustainable natural resources management and biodiversity conservation that results in responsible, equitable economic growth and good environmental governance.

IPAC will build upon successful co-management interventions of two pilot activities (see brief descriptions of MACH and Nishorgo projects below or follow the link on the left for final project reports) funded by USAID over the past 10 years and implemented with the Ministries of Fisheries and Livestock and Environment and Forest. Carefully crafted, integrated, activities will be implemented to: develop a PA strategy that applies to all ecologically and economically significant areas, including those outside of freshwater and forest ecosystems, build technical capacity within national and local level institutions for PA co-management, and expand the geographic area of Bangladesh under co-management to ensure the long-term success of the model.  Institutionalization and successful implementation of IPAC will also address a series of short-, medium- and long-term climate change adaptation issues.

USAID/Bangladesh expects IPAC to have widespread environmental, social and economic impacts.  First, adoption of the integrated PA system strategy will mainstream co-management within GOB policy, culminating into devolving natural resource management authority and benefit sharing rights to the community.  Second, institutional capacity building within the GOB will enhance relevant agencies’ capability to work with communities through a multi-stakeholder approach that promotes conservation and sustainable management of natural capital.  Third, increasing the area under co-management will in practice bring a proportionately much larger landscape area under the PA system, which will impart a multiplication effect on the overall conservation effort. 

Precursor Pilot Projects Demonstrated Success of Protected Area Co-management Approach

The Management of Aquatic Ecosystems through Community Husbandry (MACH) project initiative was carried out in two phases, Phase I from July 1998-October 2003 cost $6.5 million and Phase II from October 2003-June 2007 with an estimated value of $3.1 million.  Additionally, about $6 million worth of local currency has been made available to support this project.  The local currency supported operations g and will end in June 2008. The focus of MACH in three freshwater ecosystem areas in Bangladesh (approximately 1% of the total area under freshwater ecosystems) was to maintain and recover selected natural flood plain ecosystems and associated fisheries, while also increasing biodiversity.  Furthermore the project provided alternative sources of income for poor fishing families, successfully tested the co-management model and extended project innovations more widely around the country.

The Co-Management of Tropical Forest Resources in Bangladesh activity, commonly known as the Nishorgo Support Project (NSP) was a $7.2 million five-year program (June 2003-November 2008), supplemented with an additional local currency support of $2.5 million.  This project worked to improve resource conservation in five selected forest protected areas (PAs), which constitute roughly 1% of the declared forest PA system, and the associated landscape.  Specifically, NSP focused on: (1) development of a co-management planning and implementation model for selected Protected Areas (National Park, Wildlife Sanctuary and Game Reserve); (2) interventions and investments for improved ecosystems management; (3) encouragement of a positive policy environment for co-management; (4) creation of a conservation constituency in Bangladesh; and, (5) institutionalizing the process.
 
The two USAID projects, MACH and NSP, have successfully demonstrated the value of conservation with benefits reaching the poorest groups in the target areas. The co-management approach piloted through these projects has also equipped poor men and women to resist pressure from the powerful and therefore deterred elite capture of natural resources for personal benefit in project areas.

The activities of the Arannayk Foundation include:

• the establishment, restoration, protection and maintenance of protected areas and reserves;
• the development and implementation of scientifically sound systems of natural resources management;
• training programs to increase scientific, technical and managerial capacities of individuals and organization involved in forest conservation;
• the restoration, protection or sustainable use of diverse animal and plant species;
• research and identification of medicinal uses of tropical forest plant life; and
• the development and support of the livelihoods of individuals living in or near a tropical forest in a manner consistent with protecting such a tropical forest.

The entities in Bangladesh which are eligible to receive grants from the fund are: non-governmental environmental, forestry, conservation, development and indigenous people organizations; scientific, academic and professional organizations related to forests; other appropriate forest related entities active in the country; and exceptionally, agencies of the Government of Bangladesh.

Since 2003, the Arannayk Foundation has approved 39 projects valued approximately at $1.9 million.