Faisal, Arif Mohammad

The overall objective of the project was to improve environmental quality of the degraded canals/beels/rivers to allow for proper functioning of migratory routes for fish and other organisms, to increase the crop production by facilitating irrigation and thereby effect socio-economic uplift of the local communities, especially for the women and the disadvantaged. This report shows how this was accomplished.

This aim of this report was to show how restoration activities in some degraded and silted wetlands, identified by the community people enhanced fish populations and aquatic habitats, increased agricultural production by ensuring adequate irrigation facilities, facilitated fish migration, and increased the water holding capacity of the wetlands area.

The loss of plants from floodplain ecosystems have resulted in further degradation of other ecological functions. To stop and reverse this trend, massive plantation programmes were carried out at three floodplain sites: Padma-Jamuna, Brahmaputra-Shitalakshya and Madhumati Floodplain. The overall objective being to increase native tree coverage and enhance productivity by establishing plantations through people’s participation. The report shows how this was accomplished.

Wetlands in Bangladesh are going through a difficult phase caused by exponential degradation and destruction of these ecosystems and dwindling of their valuable resources. Plant resources are more vulnerable due to over-harvesting and unwise exploitation.

This book primarily based on observation made during field trips to different haors and floodplains in the SEMP project areas by plant experts, IUCNB staff and partner NGOs. Experience and ideas of the local communities of these wetlands were also considered while preparing the manuscript. Some of the information has been drawn from existing published and unpublished accounts. This book will provide a guideline for future wetland plant resource conservation and management.

The present publication registers a brief delineation of actions fielded for wetland’s resource management with the local communities under the SEMP components till June 2005. In some case the reporting time vary which is duly mentioned. The principal approach of the projects and the project sites descriptions are followed by descriptions of different project interventions along with brief comments on the impacts they have created on the environment and on the local communities or beyond.