Traditional Biomass Fuel Consumption by Rural Households in Degraded Sal (shorea Robusta) Forest Areas of Bangladesh

This study explored the availability and consumption pattern of various traditional biomass fuels, preference of and expenditure for biomass fuels, problems with the uses of biomass fuels and villagers’ strategy to cope with the biomass fuel problems. Data were collected from 330 households under three wealth categories – well-off, middle and poor households. Households were found to depend largely on biomass fuel including firewood, branches, leaves and twigs, bamboo, straw, husk and cow dung mainly for cooking. Firewood was the dominant biomass fuel of well-off households (43%) whereas middle (37%) and poor households (35%) used tree branches. Total biomass, firewood and cow dung consumption by well-off households was significantly higher than that of middle and poor households. More than 60% well-off households and 44% households of middle category collect tree biomass from their own homestead forests while 59% of poor households gather from neighbour’s homestead forests. Villagers preferred Albizia saman, Acacia auriculiformis, Artocarpus heterophyllus, Swietenia mahagoni and Albizia procera as fuel wood tree species. Households across three categories spend 8%, 13% and 16% of their total income for buying biomass fuels, respectively. Decreasing forest resources impose threats on availability of biomass fuels. Although 27% well-off households were using improved cooking stoves (ICS), mass motivation and subsidized ICS can increase their uses. Along with reforestation programs government may take initiative for trading carbon offsets from ICS programs on carbon markets as part of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).