The Conservation Finance Guide presents a host of potential financing opportunities for nature conservation in general, with a special focus on protected area management. Many of these finance mechanisms rely on a "market-based" approach, valuing and marketing the goods and services that a protected area generates in support of local livelihoods and the broader economy.
Mangroves are among the most valuable ecosystems providing food and protection for a large number of marine and land-based organisms, livelihoods for coastal populations, and protection from ocean swell and other extreme weather events for low-lying coastal areas. In the wake of the 2004 Indian ocean tsunami there was a strong realization that much of the future devastation to human life and property could be avoided through the existence of healthy, properly-managed and conserved mangroves.
The main objective of this report is to provide hydrological inputs that include inflow and outflow routes of water, identification of various rivers, beels and khals functioning within the Hakaluki haor region, current hydrological and hydraulic characteristics, soil characteristics of the area and land use pattern as governed by hydraulic regimes, information on natural resources like flora and fauna and suggestions on development of a Community-based Haor Resources Management Project.
IUCN Bangladesh has undertaken this initiative in association with Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) under the Sustainable Environment Management Programme (SEMP) in the Madhumati Floodplain. Under this project one of the interventions is to promote alternative livelihood options. Baira farming was one of the options suggested by the people of that area.
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.
