Forest-based Tourism in Bangladesh: Status, Problems and Prospects

Bangladesh is a land of diverse forest-based natural attractions throughout the evergreen, semi-evergreen, and mangrove forest ecosystems. The article attempts at exploring various dimensions of ecotourism industry and critically analyzes the relationship among the stakeholders, overall strength-weakness of ecotourism sector and impediments hindering its development. National Parks, Ecoparks, Wildlife Sanctuaries, Game Reserves, and the like have been developed in the natural forest ecosystems to attract tourists from home and abroad. Cheap transportation, lodging and associated costs, unique scenic beauty and wilderness of all sites and socio-cultural diversity of indigenous communities living in the forest together make up the strength of the industry as a whole. The study identifies a number of impediments, including conflict among the stakeholders and forest degradation hindering expansion of ecotourism industry. For sustainable development of forest-based tourism, traditional ‘Top-down’ management approach is suggested to avoid and voice of all stakeholders needs to be considered in decision-making.