Source from:- http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=48708
It's either forests, or nothing. This is how one can define livelihoods in the hill tracts.
[Picture- Settlers clear off trees on a hill to make room for homes, damaging the environment while people of the area engage in Jhum cultivation, inset, which leads to erosion of hills. Photo: Syed Zakir Hossain]
As we travelled from one hill to another, one pourasava to the other, one territory to another in Khagrachhari and Rangamati, we found that the people are highly dependent on forest resources.
They are clearing hills after hills without any regards for forestry or wildlife and engaging in Jhum cultivation. They have no other means for survival too. And when you have no options, you turn to the immediate next thing you have--the forests.
And these people have been climbing up and up and deeper and deeper into the forests. We saw huts being built in places where no habitation had been before. We saw new hills being cleared for cultivation.
But with the depletion of forests, livelihood is becoming difficult for the hills people by the day as Shantimoy Chakma of Marissa would testify.
"I lived there," he points to a hill yonder. "Years ago, my family could survive on what we grew. We had the trees to supplement us. We could sell one tree and that would see us through the year. But now the trees are gone. Whatever is left does not bring us much money. The land has lost its fertility. So, I moved on."
Shantimoy showed us his new hut. He has squatted on a new hill. Cleared its surroundings and started Jhum again. Years from now, this place would become infertile with the erosion of soil. Then he would move again. And again. And then nobody knows what will happen in a barren land.
Hardly any industry has developed in the hills. And livelihood outside agriculture is scarce too. NGO operation is weak here and cattle rearing or poultry is not easily seen. Handicraft is also produced in limited scale. There is no real effort to link this land with the mainland economy. Little public money has poured in to create non-agriculture employment.
And as a natural alternative to the absence of economic development, arum cultivation is being introduced in the hills where pristine trees should have been standing tall. We have seen the forest department joining hands with the locals in the act of destroying forest.
As a consequence of this mass-scale destruction of forest, the timber industry in the hills today is faced with an uncertain future. Or you can call it a "certain future of gradual death".
"Our timber supply has dwindled to half in the past five years or so," said Md Hakim, a sawmill owner in Rangamati. "And whatever timber we get is of little value as they are not mature enough to produce good quality wood."
Rangamati timber industry is fully dependent on locally extracted logs. The forests that once supplied bulk of the timber to the rest of the country is today barren and so the local demand is now met from imports.
"Unless we take immediate actions to provide alternative livelihood to the hills people, the remaining forests would be gone very soon," said Dr Reza Khan. "We need to plan how to use the forest in a sustainable way to provide jobs to the people."
Dr Khan lists a number of activities that can be introduced in the hills for employment generation. Farming of wildlife such as hill myna, hornbill, deer, monkey is just one as the local people are well adapted to doing so. Giving incentives and arranging marketing of handicrafts, encouraging tourism and training up the locals as guides, encouraging backyard farming of chickens, ducks, rabbits, leeches (blood for the leeches to be collected from slaughter houses), laboratory white rats and mice, cockroaches--all of which can be supplied to laboratories and the zoos.
But until such alternative livelihood initiatives are taken, pressure on the forests will only increase day by day and forest destruction will continue.
As we travelled from one hill to another, one pourasava to the other, one territory to another in Khagrachhari and Rangamati, we found that the people are highly dependent on forest resources.
They are clearing hills after hills without any regards for forestry or wildlife and engaging in Jhum cultivation. They have no other means for survival too. And when you have no options, you turn to the immediate next thing you have--the forests.
And these people have been climbing up and up and deeper and deeper into the forests. We saw huts being built in places where no habitation had been before. We saw new hills being cleared for cultivation.
But with the depletion of forests, livelihood is becoming difficult for the hills people by the day as Shantimoy Chakma of Marissa would testify.
"I lived there," he points to a hill yonder. "Years ago, my family could survive on what we grew. We had the trees to supplement us. We could sell one tree and that would see us through the year. But now the trees are gone. Whatever is left does not bring us much money. The land has lost its fertility. So, I moved on."
Shantimoy showed us his new hut. He has squatted on a new hill. Cleared its surroundings and started Jhum again. Years from now, this place would become infertile with the erosion of soil. Then he would move again. And again. And then nobody knows what will happen in a barren land.
Hardly any industry has developed in the hills. And livelihood outside agriculture is scarce too. NGO operation is weak here and cattle rearing or poultry is not easily seen. Handicraft is also produced in limited scale. There is no real effort to link this land with the mainland economy. Little public money has poured in to create non-agriculture employment.
And as a natural alternative to the absence of economic development, arum cultivation is being introduced in the hills where pristine trees should have been standing tall. We have seen the forest department joining hands with the locals in the act of destroying forest.
As a consequence of this mass-scale destruction of forest, the timber industry in the hills today is faced with an uncertain future. Or you can call it a "certain future of gradual death".
"Our timber supply has dwindled to half in the past five years or so," said Md Hakim, a sawmill owner in Rangamati. "And whatever timber we get is of little value as they are not mature enough to produce good quality wood."
Rangamati timber industry is fully dependent on locally extracted logs. The forests that once supplied bulk of the timber to the rest of the country is today barren and so the local demand is now met from imports.
"Unless we take immediate actions to provide alternative livelihood to the hills people, the remaining forests would be gone very soon," said Dr Reza Khan. "We need to plan how to use the forest in a sustainable way to provide jobs to the people."
Dr Khan lists a number of activities that can be introduced in the hills for employment generation. Farming of wildlife such as hill myna, hornbill, deer, monkey is just one as the local people are well adapted to doing so. Giving incentives and arranging marketing of handicrafts, encouraging tourism and training up the locals as guides, encouraging backyard farming of chickens, ducks, rabbits, leeches (blood for the leeches to be collected from slaughter houses), laboratory white rats and mice, cockroaches--all of which can be supplied to laboratories and the zoos.
But until such alternative livelihood initiatives are taken, pressure on the forests will only increase day by day and forest destruction will continue.
