バングラデシュ・テクナフ半島における森林消失にみるキンマ栽培の影響

Rich forests once nurturing wild elephants in the Teknaf Peninsula in Bangladesh have been mostly lost. The cause of this deforestation was not commercial logging or a large-scale development, but the accumulated effects of daily activities by local residents. This paper examines human influences on the forest by cultivation of the betel plant (Piper betel) for its leaves as an important cash crop. This paper (1) analyzes the importance of betel cultivation in local subsistence, (2) evaluates the consumption of forest resources by constructing "pan boroz", the facility in which betel plants are cultivated, and (3) examines the significance of setting up pan boroz in previously forested area through time by recording the date of establishment of all existing pan boroz in field surveys in one village. A result indicates that betel cultivation is crucial for residents surviving in unfavorable conditions for agriculture. As those two ways of betel cultivation affecting the forest are assessed, each factor may contribute to the loss of 5% of the forest area in the village.