M. Z. Rahman
Department of Agricultural Extension Education, Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU), Mymensingh, Bangladesh
M. Tani
A.Z.M.M. Uddin
Department of of Soil Science, Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU), Mymensingh, Bangladesh
S.M.A. Ullah
Department of Agricultural Extension Education, 2Department of of Soil Science, Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU), Mymensingh, Bangladesh
Information sources, Livelihood, Rohingya, Teknaf Wildlife Sanctuary
Shaplapur village of Teknaf upazila under Cox’s Bazar district
Socio-economic and Policy
Shaplapur village of Teknaf upazila under Cox’s Bazar district in Bangladesh was the study area located near the western side of the TWS. A cluster of undocumented Rohingya people live in buffer forest of coastal belt of this Shaplapur buffer zone. Shaplapur is a local marketplace and plays an important role in the locality since this market is far away from both Teknaf main market and the Cox’s Bazaar town. Moreover, TWS splits the east and west sides’ communication longitudinally. The total number of Rohingya households and population are about 980 and 5,880 respectively in and around the buffer forest of Shaplapur. Randomly selected 125 household heads (about 13%) were interviewed through structured schedule in order to assess their livelihoods status and explore their extent of use of information sources. Secondary data on different community and service oriented information were collected from different official documents of GOs and NGOs of the locality. Data were collected during March 2012. Focus group discussion (FGD) was also conducted to assess some of their social and natural facility and service delivery issues of livelihoods. Two FGDs were also conducted to explore influences of information sources in choosing livelihoods. Outcome of these two FGDs were merged together to achieve a comprehensive result. At first, the list of livelihood issues was prepared by asking the respondents through face to face interview. Then, livelihoods status was measured based on the extent of possession of livelihoods assets. Assets referred to the resource base of people. Assets are often represented as a pentagon in the sustainable livelihoods framework, consisting of the following five categories: natural resources (also called ‘natural capital’), physical reproducible goods (‘physical capital’), monetary resources (‘financial capital’), manpower with different skills (‘human capital’), social networks of various kinds (‘social capital’) (Anon., 2009). Obviously, selected indicators were chosen to measure each of the five capitals. Consolidated score from labor power, health and nutritional status, skills and knowledge of human capital constituted the human capital score. For natural capital the indicators were access to land, water, wildlife, marine resources, forest and storm protection; for social capital they were trust in government, memberships in civic organizations, hours spent volunteering, voter turnout, newspaper readership, access to basic services; for physical capital these were houses, vehicles, equipment, livestock, access to information, adequate water supply and sanitation and for financial capital they were savings, gold/jewellery, access to regular income, net accesses to credit and insurance. However, the core score of selected indicators for Human capital was 4 to12, Natural capital 6 to 18, Social capital 6 to18, Physical capital 7 to 21, and Financial capital 5 to15.The overall livelihoods score for selected core indicators was thus from 28 to 84. The extent of use of information sources for livelihoods adopted by Rohingyas was measured through rating scale against 15 selected sources. The scale was ‘not at all’, ‘rarely used’, ‘occasionally used’ and ‘frequently used’ with corresponding scores of 0, 1, 2 and 3. The factions of sources were individual, group and mass. The relationship between the socio-demographic characteristics of the Rohingya and their extent of use of information sources was explored through computation of Pearson’s Product-Moment Correlation Co-efficient (r). The influence of information sources in choosing the livelihoods was revealed through conducting FGDs.
J. Agrofor. Environ. 7 (2): 15-18, 2013; ISSN 1995-6983
Journal