Socioeconomic Contribution of Homestead Forests to the Urban Households: An Assessment in Rangamati Municipality, Bangladesh

Nikhil Chakma¹

Section:Research Paper, Product Type: Journal-Paper
Vol.11 , Issue.3 , pp.67-76, Mar-2025

Online published on Mar 31, 2025

Copyright © Nikhil Chakma . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 

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Abstract :
Homestead forests play an important role for enhancing the households’ livelihood. This study assesses the contribution of homestead forests to the food, income, energy-use and other ecosystem services of the households (HHs) of Rangamati municipality, Bangladesh. A quantitative study was conducted through interviewing of 195 households from six villages namely Basshuri suguno, Kippe para, Lemuchari para, Tanchangya para, Mitinga Chari, and Bilaichari para. A stratified random sampling method was applied to select the households for interview that represent the population proportion of the study villages. To collect the data, a prescribed questionnaire was used, and collected data were checked, validated and analysed using MS Excel and SPSS version 20. The study revealed that about 87.18% of HHs are involved in collecting plant or plant products for their daily life and received income about 24,119 BDT/year from the homestead forests (16.37% homestead forest income contribute to the household economy). On average, HHs have 222.90 numbers of plant species, and Bambusa vulgaris shows the highest average number of plants per household among the studied villages, followed by Tectona grandis, Areca catechu, Melocanna baccifera, Bambusa tulda, Bambusa polymorpha, Musa spp., Litchi chinensis, Mangifera indica, and Cocos nucifera. In terms of energy use for cooking and heating, about 79.5% households used fuelwood for cooking and heating. The topmost perceived ecological benefits include shade, oxygen/fresh air, erosion control, natural windbreak, and aesthetic. The study could be a baseline information to monitor the socioeconomic benefits from homestead forests in Rangamati municipality and other parts of Rangamati hill district. Findings of the study can contribute to support sustainable homestead forests management including management of urban forestry in the context of climate change, and livelihood improvement of the community.

Key-Words / Index Term :
Environmental income, fuelwood dependency, urban forestry, homestead forestry and provision ecosystem services.

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