People’s Bamboo Production Status and their Livelihood Improvement in Dimla Upazila, Nilphamari District, Bangladesh

Abstract

The bamboos are an amazingly multipurpose and useful group of plants. It is a fundamental part of human livelihood strategies in many places worldwide. This study focus was to know the state of bamboo, its’ production and the available bamboo made products, to identify the knowledge requirement for increasing the bamboo production, to identify the ways of livelihood improvement by bamboo production and explore the causes of bamboo declining along with suggestion to overcome this. Data were collected using pre-tested interview schedule from a sample of 105 bamboo clump owners. This data collection was conducted in Tepa Kharibari union of Dimla Upazila under Nilphamari district during 1st December 2017 to 15th January 2018.  Besides the descriptive statistical parameter, rank order was used for the analysis. The findings revealed that the bamboo production is declining at a gradual rate and has already decreased considerably in the study area. It is also explored that the local people mostly mentioned knowledge about better variety of bamboo is considered for increasing bamboo production. Furthermore, the means of livelihood is significantly influenced by bamboo production. The local people’s livelihood therefore, is mostly improved through increasing income and creating employment opportunities. It is warning that due to rapid increasing of residents/houses bamboo production is declining as there are not enough homesteads or fallow land in the study area to have a bamboo clump.