ROLES OF NGOS IN AGROFORESTRY IN BANGLADESH

1. An evolution if involvement of NGOs in the agroforestry reveals that they have achieved success in the following areas (ADAB, 1998):
2. In creating awareness among the people regarding the need to plant trees in farm land and the economic and commercial values of trees.
3. In emphasizing the role of agroforestry as a sustainable means of creating employment opportunities, augmenting income, improving the state of use of marginal land and also as an effective tool of poverty alleviation in the rural sector.
4. In organizing the rural poor, landless farmers, unemployed youth and other socioeconomically marginalized people into coherent, functional and self sustained groups undertaking different income generating activities including agroforestry (Farrington et. al., 1989).
5. In helping the enrichment and replenishment of the depleting homesteads.
6. In expanding the horizon of thought and practice of planting trees with wide spacing and proper trimming agricultural lands also without hampering the output of main crops.
7. In creating increasing interest among the rural land owners to use their personal marginal lands for establishing woodlots.
8. In infusing an idea of balanced planning of homesteads by selecting different varieties and species of timber, fruit, fuel, fodder, bamboo saplings for plantation so that need for all types of forest products can be met from local sources (Huda, 1987).
9. In helping establishment of nurseries by groups, individuals, model nurseries by NGOs are working as practical guide for setting up such nurseries by private individuals. It is worth mentioning that the number of private nurseries in Bangladesh has increased about 4000 from a few hundreds during the last three to four years. This has resulted due to the large demand created for saplings for plantation and the training and support being organized by a large number of NGOs.
10. The NGOs are also playing a very important role in organizing training of their target groups in forestry techniques, improved silvicultural practices and also different updated methods of nursery raising and tree improvement. This is helping in improving the variety and quantity of the rural woodlots and homesteads.
11. It has been marked that compared to govt. social forestry programmes, the number of women participants is much higher in NGO social forestry programmes.
12. A number of NGOs like Proshika MUK, Bangladesh POUSH, BRAC, and SDC etc. have development different successful and innovative approaches and models social and agroforestry, which have gained better acceptability among the people. Replication of these pragmatic and need based models is progressing rapidly and the process is showing remarkable spontaneous response from the people (Hossain, 1992).
13. In areas where govt. programmes are facing difficulty due to bureauticratic constraints, credibility gap, lack of proper commitment, field level involvement and proper orientation, the NGOs are playing a supplementary role to fill up the gaps and collaborating with govt. agencies to remove the constraints.