Degradation of land and forests by short rotation slash and burn agriculture, known locally as jhum, has become a serious concern in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh. Policies and programmes to promote alternative land use practices have largely failed. Conventionally, indigenous people are blamed for the problem, which is attributed to their conservatism and unwillingness to adopt alternative land use systems. However, this explanation overlooks the constraints inherent in adopting alternative land use practices. This paper offers an alternative explanation by examining the impact of state policies on land use in the CHT over the past two centuries. It reveals that the process of degradation started during the British colonial period with the nationalisation of land and forests and the initiation of large-scale commercial logging. It was accelerated by the establishment of reserve forests which abolished tribal people’s customary rights and forced them to reduce fallow periods in their farming. The construction of a hydroelectric dam and encouragement of lowland people to migrate to the CHT have increased pressure on the land still further. This has forced farmers to cultivate more marginal lands for growing food and annual cash crops, and to increase cultivation frequency. The author concludes that the persistence of extensive land use practices is not because of indigenous people’s adherence to traditional land use practices but because of the lack of a conducive policy environment. Where suitable policies and programmes exist (such as secure land title and appropriate support services), the author has found evidence that these can support a more sustainable mix of horticulture, agroforestry and tree farming. He concludes by outlining a range of policies that would promote economically and environmentally viable land use practices. These include: • providing tenurial rights to land users • understanding farmers’ livelihood needs • removing formal and informal levies and taxes which increase marketing costs, ultimately reducing farmers’ profit margins and constraining incentives for locally suitable land use systems • replacing the transit rules with alternative policies which ease the harvesting and marketing of timber grown on private farmland • promoting competition in trade and transportation • reforming credit policy so that credit can be accessible to farmers without land certificates • involving local people in decision-making processes.
