ICCCAD Conference RoomApartment A5, 98 Park Road, Baridhara - Dhaka
Events
23.803246
90.421486
Date/Time
Date(s) - 21/05/2015
15:00 - 16:00
Location
ICCCAD Conference Room
Categories
This week’s seminar will be taking place on Thursday, May 21. Jeffrey Chow will be presenting on his research on the local benefits of mangrove plantations in Bangladesh.
About the seminar
Between 1960 and 2001, the Government of Bangladesh established approximately 148,000ha of mangrove plantations in the coastal districts within Barisal and Chittagong Divisions for the purposes of shoreline stabilization, land accretion, and storm surge protection. Though erosion and human encroachment and conversion have removed over two-thirds of these stands, the Forest Department has continued to undertake new plantation activities as an adaptation response to climate change. However, residents of local communities are allowed to access these forests and extract various products except for the main stems of trees.
Concern over the welfare of the rural poor brings to question how local communities directly utilize those mangroves which have been established. The predominant direct use of the mangrove plantations by local rural communities is the extraction of combustible fuel, typically in the form of non-main stem material such as branches and pneumatophores. Econometric results suggest that determinants of the household decision to collect mangrove fuelwood include respondent occupation and village.
Other indirect values must be taken into account if these areas are to merit additional plantations. Additional benefits include those associated with climate change adaptation, such as storm surge mitigation, accelerated land accretion, and shoreline stabilization. However, measuring these benefits is more problematic and requires the use of geophysical modeling. Econometric analyses of farm net revenues also sheds light on the protective benefit of mangrove plantations for coastal agriculture.
About the speaker
Jeffrey Chow is a PhD candidate studying environmental and natural resource economics at Yale University, with expertise in land use within tropical countries. He is currently a US Fulbright Clinton Fellow serving as Special Assistant to the Chief Conservator of Forests within the Bangladesh Forest Department, as well as a Visiting Scholar at ICCCAD. He also has been an US EPA Science to Achieve Results Fellow researching the local economic impacts of the Bangladesh Forest Department’s mangrove plantation program. Before attending Yale, he obtained Master of Environmental Management and Master of Forestry degrees from Duke University. He was subsequently a Research Associate for Resources for the Future. Mr. Chow has authored or co-authored peer-reviewed articles appearing in Science, The Lancet, PLOSOne, Land Economics, the Journal of Sustainable Forestry, and Tropical Conservation Science.
