Forest department’s participatory afforestation programme benefited around 47,000 marginalized farmers in the region including its vast Barind tract by providing them dividend as their legitimate share for looking after trees, reports BSS.
“The participatory social afforestation programme has improved living and livelihood conditions of some 47000 poor and landless farmers through increasing their income to some extent as they get profit share after being sold trees following 10 years of plantation,” Divisional Forest Officer Ahmed Niamur Rahman said.
Participatory afforestation activities have been enhanced in order to encourage the rural people in planting saplings and nursing of the transplanted trees, he said. Rahman said the department has been implementing various lucrative programmes in all 31 upazilas of Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj, Natore and Naogaon districts.
People of the respective areas were given responsibilities to look after the planted saplings and they get 55 per cent share of the sale after 10 years of plantation while 20 per cent and five percent are distributed among land owners and local government institution concerned, he said. Successful implementations of the social forestry programme always supplement the government’s poverty reduction effort with facing the adverse impact of climate change in the drought-prone area, he added. Profitable afforestation activities encouraged many people to plant saplings of wood, medicinal and fruit-bearing trees at homesteads, roadsides, office premises, embankments, forest areas, religious institutions’ premises and other places, he said. Woodlot forest on 2,051.61 hectares of land, agro-forestry on 407.65 hectares and char land forest on 721 hectares have, so far, been created, he said, adding that forestation has been created on 4,686.29-kilometer railway and connecting road lands, 1,621.05-kilometer river embankment and 175- kilometer canal embankments.
The department has earned more than Taka 62.18 crore through selling trees from 6,538.94-kilometer steep garden, 2,106.11-hectare woodlot garden and 407.65-hectare agro-garden, sources said.
From the earned money, over Taka 30.18 crore were paid among beneficiary farmers as their profit-shares and Taka 4.85 crore among land owners and institutions while the government got Taka 19.19 crore as revenue, they said. Over Taka 7.95 crore are being spent for rebuilding garden in the areas where trees have already been sold, they added.
In last 2018-19 fiscal, four beneficiaries Hamid Mondal, Abdul Quddus, Jewel Rana and Russel Hossain received over Taka 26.41 lakh as profit share. Meanwhile, the Barind Multipurpose Development Authority (BMDA) has planted around 2.58 crore saplings of various fruit, timber and herbal trees in different areas to protect environment and meet the growing demands for fruits and timber in the region. BMDA Executive Director Engineer Abdur Rashid said the tree plantation activities will ultimately help reduce carbon in atmosphere at substantial level and that is very important to face the adverse impact of climate change in the Barind tract.