Fence, Fines and Care of the Forest: Conservation Politics in the Sundarbans of Bangladesh

The Sundarbans is the largest mangrove forest reserve in the world and is divided between the southwest region of Bangladesh and southeast of West Bengal, India. Though more than five million people directly or indirectly depend on its resources for their livelihoods, the conservation of the Sundarbans is highly how different visions of conservation interventions are contested in the Bangladesh Sundarbans. The research questions and objectives will be investigated through ethnographic fieldwork on the fringes of the Sundarbans, in villages in Shyamnagar upazila (sub-district) under the Satkhira district. The proposed thesis will contribute to the ongoing debate on conservation politics: by contributing an anthropological perspective to an interdisciplinary dialogue, the work will help to better understand the potential for conservation that respects the human and non-human world. important for the Bangladesh government, Forest Department, and the local population too. This proposed PhD research aims to investigate conservation politics through three interrelated interpretations: i) a fortress conservation that creates tensions between authorities and local people; ii) conservation as anti-politics where neoliberal conservation exposes nature and community to the service of capital; and iii) alternative struggles to move away from mainstream conservation. By using four case studies: human-animal conflict through the 'save the tiger' project; the commodification of nature-culture through an eco-village model; environmental subjectivities through co-management of the forest; and alternatives to mainstream conservation through indigenous forest cosmology, this research will study how different visions of conservation interventions are contested in the Bangladesh Sundarbans. The research questions and objectives will be investigated through ethnographic fieldwork on the fringes of the Sundarbans, in villages in Shyamnagar upazila (sub-district) under the Satkhira district. The proposed thesis will contribute to the ongoing debate on conservation politics: by contributing an anthropological perspective to an interdisciplinary dialogue, the work will help to better understand the potential for conservation that respects the human and non-human world.