Land Use Preference for Ecosystem Services and Well-Being in Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh
department or school: Forestry, Faculty of
department or school: Non UBC
data provider: DSpace
identifier citation: Forests 13 (12): 2086 (2022)
creator: Ahammad, Ronju
creator: Stacey, Natasha
creator: Sunderland, Terry C. H.
creator: Sangha, Kamaljit K.
issued: 2025-06-09T17:54:40Z
issued: 2022-12-07
description: Researchers increasingly investigate ecosystem services to assess their role in supporting livelihoods, well-being and economic value in order to inform decision-making. Many studies have explored links between ecosystem services and community-based livelihoods, with a very narrow focus on the importance of land use to well-being. We evaluated the value of ecosystem services from various land uses supporting livelihoods and the overall well-being of local communities in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh. By applying a participatory habitat valuation approach with the ethnic communities from eight villages, we explored their preferences for, and perceptions of, ecosystem services and their sources in a multi-functional landscape under different land use, i.e., forest, swidden and low-land agriculture, fruit orchard and water bodies, and three land ownership contexts (state, private and mixed ownership on forest lands). Our findings revealed that community land use preference for ecosystem services supports ten different well-being needs. Among others, forests were valued land used for two-thirds of well-being needs, including the provision of shelter, nutrition, primary health care, an adequate supply of potable water, a lower level of ecological stress (i.e., protection from associated landslide soil erosion), cultural and spiritual benefits and livestock foraging. People commonly valued the food, income and nutrition contributions of all land uses. However, different forest and land ownership contexts and rights within the landscape influence people’s preference for ecosystem services from land use in supporting their well-being. People with secure ownership (i.e., private and private-community) showed a broad and positive appreciation for ecosystem services to meet their well-being needs. Our study highlights that local and ethnic people’s land-use preferences and ownership contexts are critical factors in assessing well-being in the context of multif…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/91305
note: Citation: Ahammad, R.; Stacey, N.;Sunderland, T.; Sangha, K.K. LandUse Preference for EcosystemServices and Well-Being inChittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh.Forests 2022, 13, 2086. https://doi.org/10.3390/f13122086Academic Editor: Radu-Daniel PintiliiReceived: 2 November 2022Accepted: 5 December 2022Published: 7 December 2022Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralwith regard to jurisdictional claims inpublished maps and institutional affil-iations.Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.This article is an open access articledistributed under the terms andconditions of the Creative CommonsAttribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).ArticleLand Use Preference for Ecosystem Services and Well-Being inChittagong Hill Tracts of BangladeshRonju Ahammad 1,* , Natasha Stacey 2 , Terry Sunderland 3,4 and Kamaljit K. Sangha 21 Department of Forest Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 90183 Umea, Sweden2 Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University, Darwin 0909, Australia3 Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada4 Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor 16115, Indonesia* Correspondence: ronju.ahammad@slu.se or ronj.ahammad@gmail.comAbstract: Researchers increasingly investigate ecosystem services to assess their role in supportinglivelihoods, well-being and economic value in order to inform decision-making. Many studies haveexplored links between ecosystem services and community-based livelihoods, with a very narrowfocus on the importance of land use to well-being. We evaluated the value of ecosystem servicesfrom various land uses supporting livelihoods and the overall well-being of local communities in theChittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh. By applying a participatory habitat valuation approachwith the ethnic communities from eight villages, we explored their preferences for, and perceptions of,ecosystem ser…
has type: Article
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0449066
language: eng
peer review status: Reviewed
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
publisher DOI: 10.3390/f13122086
rights: CC BY 4.0
rights URI: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
scholar level: Faculty
scholar level: Researcher
subject: valuation of ecosystem services
subject: forest and land tenure
subject: forest ecosystem services
subject: landscape value
subject: livelihoods
subject: landscape multifunctionality
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/91305