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Auguring urban forestry

The significance and prospect of UF can hardly be overemphasized. However, the present activities, as carried out by varied public agencies under the banner of UF, have serious limitations including the lack of effective functional coordination; bureaucratic and centralized pattern of administration; lack of adequate citizen involvement; ineffective monitoring of the following up mechanism; and the transient and temporary nature of operation.

Niaz Ahmed Khan
IN the heels of the predatory nature of deforestation and environmental degradation, urban as well as rural afforestation programmes have assumed paramount significance in Bangladesh in line with the neighbouring South Asian nations. Although there has been a prolific growth of literature on environment in general and forestry in particular, research on urban forestry in Bangladesh has been strikingly limited.
The government has attached highest priority to forestry development in a vowed attempt to combat environmental degrada-tion and to arrest the rate of deforestation. It is estimated that deforestation has occurred at an annual rate of 8,000 hectare. Community focussed participatory afforestation programmes have become the mainstay of public and private forestry activities in the country. In recent years, a number of urban forestry programmes have been launched along side similar rural afforestation initiatives. Examples include the city afforestation schemes organised and managed by various public and local government agencies such as the metropolitan (city) corporations, municipalities, the department of forests, the directorate of environment, educational institutions and other specialized and regimented organisations (e g. the Bangladesh National Cadet Corps).
In following the widely used definition, Urban Forestry (UF), for the purpose of this research, connotes a specialised branch of forestry that has as its objective the
cultivation and management of trees for their present and potential contribution to the physiological, sociological and economic wellbeing of urban society. Inherent in this function is a comprehensive programme designed to educate the urban populace on the role of trees and related plants in the urban environment. In its broadest sense, urban forestry embraces a multi-managerial system that includes municipal watersheds, wildlife habitats, outdoor recreation opportunities, landscape design, recycling of municipal wastes, tree care in general, and the future production of wood fiber as raw material.
UF is essentially concerned with the management of tree plantation in and around the city or town areas. A wide variety of locations and sites within the urban setting, such as parks, streets, residential places, industrial and commercial zones, parking lots, community centres, educational and business premises, religious seminaries and worship places can be utilized for UF development.
The role, significance and prospective advantages of UF have now been well established. UF may offer numerous benefits to urban dwellers and the urban environment by maintaining and sustaining the natural processes (e.g. the water, gaseous, nutrient cycles); supporting the local flora and fauna; providing economic return; augmenting aesthetic and social values; and curbing climatic pollution.
The recent governmental macro policies and strategies have emphasised tree planting in all prospective (and currently unutilised or underutilised) lands (including urban locations). The Forest Policy 1994, for example, suggests and encourages tree planting on the courtyards of varied institutions such as local government offices, schools, eidgah (open prayer ground), mosques and seminar ies, temples, clubs and orphanages. It also commits that the government will provide all nec-
essary support and technical guidance to the members of the public for this purpose.
Drawing on an empirical research on selected UF activities of the four major public institutions in Chittagong (the Chittagong City Corporation; the Chittagong Flotilla of the Bangladesh National Cadet Corps; the Bangladesh Railway, Chittagong; and the Chittagong Forest Division)
together with a review of the relevant literature, one can identify the following dominant features and characteristic trends of the UF management in Bangladesh:
• The UF programmes in the public sector are carried out in a generally piecemeal and disintegrated basis. There is a serious lack of effective functional coordination among the concerned agencies and institu-
tions.
• The management of UF activities is overtly bureaucratic, inflexible and top-down.
• With the exception of the Forest Department, there is a general dearth of technically qualified personnel among the staff involved in UF. This largely makes the planning, design and implementation of UF plantations difficult and technically unsound.
• The special features and characteristics of UF do not seem to have been adequately considered and addressed to. Some of these features include limited availability of land and planting materials in the urban locations. aesthetic valuation of urban plantations; heterogeneity ofurban dwellers; a relatively harsh environmental situation (which renders a stressful habitat for trees); and the difficulty in administering the required public motivation and extension programmes in the urban areas. The case studies of this research suggest that the con cemed institutions have hardly taken any exclusive or specialised measure(s) to respond to these distinctive features and challenges of UF.
• In most cases, there is no written or legal document as to the distribution of benefits arising out of UF activities.
• Most funds for the UF
programmes are provided by the concerned agencies from internal sources. This constitutes a distinctive feature of UF in view of the fact that most other components of Social Forestry activities in the country are heavily dependent on foreign (external) sources. By relying mainly on internal (government) sources, the UF programmes typically suffer from inadequate fund and logistic support
• The level and extent of public involvement in the UF programmes are clearly marginal, inadequate and of essentially cosmetic nature Most of these programmes are planned, designed and implemented by the public staff concerned. The limited public participation is found in the form of some involvement in the nursery raising and planting as waged labourers. Besides, UF activities in selected public places, for example in the parks, play grounds and educational premises, may offer some indirect and occasional benefits to the members of public in such forms as fruits, fodder, shade and aesthetic nourishment.
• There is hardly any systematic and organised effort to periodically maintain, monitor and evaluate the effect, outcome and performance of the UF. This also leads to the general scarcity of relevant information and record.
The significance and prospect of UF can hardly be overemphasized. However, the present activities, as carried out by varied public agencies under the banner of UF, have
serious limitations including the lack of effective functional coordination; bureaucratic and centralized pattern of administration; lack of adequate citizen involvement; ineffective monitoring of the following up mechanism; and the transient and temporary nature of operation.
The present UF activities, albeit the limitations, are a promising enterprise, and thus, deserve to be sustained through appropriate institutions. Sustaining the UF programmes will require careful planning and concerted effort with reference to a particular biophysical situation and socioeconomic setting. Such a planning and subsequent action will require, inter alia, functional coordination among the concerned institutions; a reasonable degree of citizen participation in all four phases of project cycle, i.e., in the planning, implementation, benefits and monitoring; relative flexibility and devolution of activities in the field offices; the programmes' ability to adopt and respond to local demands and situational peculiarities, and the establishment of a regular maintenance, monitoring and impact assessment mechanism. Without some of these serious efforts towards sustenance and institutionalization, the development of UF is unlikely to pass beyond the current rhetorical state, and transform into a practical. community focussed development strategy. Dr Niaz Ahmed Khan (niarkhangyaboo com) is Professor of Development Studies at the University of Dhaka, and Honourary Research Fellow, Centre for Development Studies. Ury versify of Wafas, UK.