Evaluating the economic value of Sundarban, Bangladesh’s provisioning services with a special focus on the forest dependency of the local peoples

The Sundarbans, located in the transborder region of Bangladesh and India, constitute the biggest mangrove forest in the world and provide a wide range of goods and services to many coastal people. But the value of these provisioning services is not well understood, particularly in the Sundarbans Reserve Forest (SRF) in Bangladesh, despite their crucial role in biodiversity conservation and the economy of local communities. This study determined the worth of SRF’s provisioning services based on fuelwood, fish, shrimp, honey, and wax income. Field investigation, economic analysis based on the producer’s surplus approach, and GIS framework were used. In this study, SRF’s provisioning value is estimated to be US$145.2 million/year. Moreover, this study also showed that households, particularly those with lower and middle incomes, rely significantly on mangrove forest products for their livelihoods. The lowest income group’s households depend heavily on forest products for their survival since they lack land and resources for agriculture or livestock. As a result, a larger share of their income comes from the forest. With nine upazilas (sub-districts) near the SRF and around 4 million resource-dependent people living there, sustainable coastal zone management is crucial for reducing severe poverty. Therefore, effective management plans for the SRF must ensure continuous access to forest resources for local people, particularly for sustaining the livelihoods of the poorest. Adopting a co-management approach in the SRF is likely to be the strategy that both improves local people’s quality of life and most effectively conserves coastal biodiversity.