Prospects of eco-tourism in the Sundarbans of Bangladesh

Abstract

Tourism is an emerging sector for Bangladesh. It is one of the most growing industries all over the world which can play a significant role for the development of Bangladesh economy that generates foreign currency. Eco-tourism is a new form of tourism that has developed very fast in the last few years. It focuses primarily on experiencing and learning about nature, its landscape, flora, fauna and their habitats, as well as cultural artifacts from the locality. It is understood as potential management tool for conserving the Sundarbans mangrove ecosystem. This paper represents the key issues of the current tourism practices in the Sundarbans mangrove forest. The theoretical part of this thesis acknowledge about many aspects of the largest mangrove forest of the world that is very famous for unique ecosystem, river networks, with magnificent scenic beauty and natural resources for its wide biodiversity of mangrove flora and fauna both on land and water. The aim of this paper is to reveal the problems and prospects of ecotourism and to critically investigate ecotourism’s relationship to sustainable development in Sundarbans. It is tried to highlight the special attractive tourist spots of Sundarbans. In Sundarbans eco-tourism has been identified as a tool to promote environmental awareness and education and for the pleasure of nature for both international and domestic tourists. Ecotourism supports in community development by providing the alternative source of livelihood to local community which is more sustainable.The promotional activity of ecotourism in Sundarbans should be enhanced for disseminating biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and adaptation, environment and wildlife insocial media, electronic and print media. In the empirical part, the author has cited many valuable development ideas and suggestions which has come out from the experience of visitors. This paper suggests that ecotourism can be a means to attain sustainability in the Sundarbansreserve forest as well as protecting the world heritage sites. Well-developed tourism plan could provide economic and political incentives for proper management and conservation that could bring benefit to local communities and national economies. The paper also focuses on how to minimize the impact of tourist intervention in the reserve forest through creating awareness to the all levels of stakeholder. The study concludes that the government of Bangladesh should take an integrated strategic plan with sound ecotourism policy with strengthening technical and financial capacities of stakeholders as well as awareness program.Further research on the policy integration, community participation, enterprise development and imposing of conservation tax for ecotourism will unveil more useful management possibilities for ecotourism in the Sundarbans.