Applying an ecosystem service approach to examine site-level variations of forest importance in a Bangladesh rural landscape

The study examined the relative importance of forest benefits in rural households of Chittagong Hill Tracts(CHT) region in Bangladesh. Applying an ecosystem service approach, we explored the direct use across different categories and perceived importance of indirect benefits of forest and tree based ecosystem services in the livelihoods of rural people in the region. A structured questionnaire survey with 214-300households was conducted across 3 sites (i.e. remote, intermediate and on-road sites selected based on distance to forest, market and road). Our data shows that there is a wide use of provisioning ecosystem services (i.e. fuel wood and different plant and animal sourced forest food) in the households across the sites. However, the use of provisioning services varies for subsistence and cash income across the three sites. Overall the subsistence use of different provisioning services is higher in the remote site while cash income is higher in the intermediate site (with the exception of timber at the on-road site). Our results also revealed the perceptions of the respondents about the importance of forest and trees for indirect benefits to regulating water purification, air quality, soil protection, soil fertility, crop pollination and cultural spiritual services are higher in the remote and intermediate sites where people are living close to the natural and agroforest systems compared with further away from the monoculture plantations in the on-road site. Drawing on the results in the variations in forest uses and perceived indirect benefits of ecosystem services across sites reflects the diversity of the demands and socio-cultural values towards tree management in the landscape. Our study suggests that the existing forest management could integrate diversity at a landscape scale to sustain forest benefits for households in the region.