Problems Faced by the Coastal People in Biodiversity Conservation and Management Activities in St. Martin’s Island, Bangladesh

The main purpose of this study was to determine the problems faced by the coastal people of the St. Martin‟s Island during participation in biodiversity conservation and management activities under a project intervention of the Government of Bangladesh. The empirical study was conducted by collecting data from 92 randomly selected members of Village Conservation Groups (VCGs) of the southeastern coastal island under Teknaf upazila of Cox‟s Bazar district. A total of 16 problems were considered for the study while ten characteristics of the respondents were selected to explore their relationship with the respondents‟ faced problem. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents in April, 2008 by face-to-face interviewing. Majority (68 percent) of the coastal people reported that they faced high problem in engaging biodiversity conservation and management activities while 20 percent and 12 percent of them faced medium and low level problems, respectively. Out of the 16 identified problems the major problems were: lack of people‟s awareness on importance of resource conservation, high dependency on woods for cooking, lack of community based government supports for natural resource management activities, lack of alternative livelihood opportunities, and lack of awareness on modern technology of farming. Moreover, coastal people‟s level of education, farm size, social participation, extension media contact, organizational participation, experience in biodiversity management activities, and knowledge on biodiversity management activities showed significant and negative relationships with their faced problem in biodiversity management activities. On the other hand, age, family size and annual family income of the respondents showed no significant relationships with their confronted problems.