I. Introduction

Bangladesh, formerly known as East Pakistan, won its independence on December 16, 1971 after a long and bitter struggle against Pakistan.

Geographically, Bangladesh is located at the North-East of the South Asian sub-continent, bordered by India to its West, Northwest and Eastern frontiers, by Burma to the South-East and by the Bay of Bengal to the South.

Bangladesh, considered as one of the poorest countries in the world, faces three major crises, namely:

Economically, Bangladesh is characterized by dehumanizing poverty with the vast majority of 60% living below the poverty line due to excessive landlessness (60% of all households are landless), endemic malnutrition (83% of all children below the age of five are malnourished) and massive unemployment (covering 30% of the estimated labor force of 36 million).

The Bangladeshi economy is predominantly agrarian. Its agricultural production represents a 44% share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), of which 31% is derived from crops, 6% from fisheries and 3-7% from forestry. The second sector of importance is the service sector which accounts for 42% of GDP, with the main subsectors being trade, transport and communications. The industry sector which accounts for 14% of GDP is basically derived from manufacturing (7.4%) and construction (6%).

Politically, the central government is becoming more autocratic and is regulating and restricting the development programs and activities of the NGOs. Its major thrusts and policies for the past ten years have been centered on greater food production towards self-sufficiency without conscious efforts to really protect the people and their environment. Henceforth, "this more growth and more profit oriented development policy has been one of the root causes of environmental, agricultural and the community degradation in the country like Bangladesh".

Environmentally, there is widespread forest destruction and environmental degradation. Numerous studies are readily available showing the depletion of soil fertility, erosion of bio-diversity, food imbalances, loss of fish populations, among others, as concrete symptoms of unsustainable agriculture. Researches have also shown that the remaining forested area of Bangladesh has dramatically been reduced from 20% in 1960 to 6-7% out of its present total proclaimed area; and 308 identified species are now considered rare and endangered.

This alarming situation of Bangladesh, caught in the ebb of these three major crises - economic, political & environmental- calls for a concerted response of the government (GOs), non- governmental organizations (NGOs) and rural people's organizations (RPOs).

However, traditional decentralized "top-bottom" approach of the bureaucratic government tends to inhibit people's participation in all phases of development activities from planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. This kind of approach has been proven ineffective and has resulted to the failure of many government development programs/projects due to the lack of people's support and participation.

The government must realize that its efforts alone are inadequate without mustering maximum people's support. Hence, this should be the starting point of any genuine dialogue and mutual collaboration among the government organizations, the NGOs and the RPOs.

For purposes of this report, what we refer to as NGO is "an association of persons formed through the personal initiatives of a few committed persons dedicated to the design, study and implementation of development projects at the grassroots level. They work outside government structures but operate within the legal framework of the country. They are also involved in direct action-oriented projects, sometimes combined with study and research. Their target populations are the rural poor."

A. The evolution of NGOs in Bangladesh

Historically, the non-government organizations (NGOs) started shortly after the 1971 war of liberation, initially providing relief services and rehabilitation assistance to war- ravaged victims. These NGOs then shifted their development programs and strategies towards community development, giving special preference to the poor and to the powerless segments of Bangladeshi society.

Dr. David Korten analyzes the evolution of the NGO sector in Bangladesh within the framework of the Four Generations of NGOs, to wit:

• First generation: NGOs put emphasis on relief and rehabilitation work (1971-72);

• Second generation: developmental efforts of NGOs are aimed towards community development (1973-75) with a number of sectoral activities (e.g., agrarian reform, health, cooperatives, etc);

• Third generation: also known as "sustainable systems development" where the NGOs extend the breadth of their programs, ensuring sustainability through undertaking large-scale programs, complementing the national development systems and involving various organizations and institutions (1976-to date); and,

• Fourth generation: which entirely depends on the development phase of NGOs in realizing their vision of society characterized by strong People's Movements.

Over the past two decades, since 1971, the NGOs have made significant progress and contributions to a country which is still struggling to survive and to rise as a truly independent nation. Through their various development programs and projects such as health, agriculture, agrarian reform, irrigation, credit assistance, among others, these NGOs have served as catalysts, making their development interventions strongly felt in the urban and rural areas.

Despite the government's ambivalent attitude towards NGOs, there are still "windows of opportunity" for building meaningful dialogue and mutual collaboration between the government and the NGOs in the promotion of sustainable agriculture and rural development.

First of all, there are some officials in government who have been very supportive and have established good working relationships with the NGOs.

Secondly, there are concrete experiences and cases of NGO participation in national government programmes - on which such GO-NGO dialogue could be built. For instance, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) alone had helped the Government Immunization Program to reach 4.5 million people and 30 million people. Immunization levels in BRAC assisted areas were found to be between 40% and 60% higher than in parts of the country where BRAC did not operate.

It is also noteworthy to mention the Proshika Manibok Unnayan Kendra's successful experience with the government under its Social Forestry Program. Proshika's struggle to establish social forestry on government land has recently been rewarded by the Forestry Department to collaborate on a small pilot agro-forestry proposal. Degraded forest lands will be replanted by local landless groups.

In addition, two more case studies are presented in the next section to highlight NGO/RPO initiatives on agrarian reform and sustainable agriculture, respectively.

Hopefully, through these case studies, we could cull out learning and insights for building a more meaningful GO-NGO-RPO dialogue and mutual collaboration towards sustainable agriculture and rural development.

B. NGOs working on Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD)

In general, NGOs in Bangladesh focus their work on the very poorest sectors of society such as the landless, women and the rural poor.

Undeniably, there is now a proliferation of NGOs in Bangladesh. According to the Association of Development Agencies in Bangladesh (ADAB), an apex forum of NGOs founded in 1974 with the objectives of facilitating information exchange among its member organizations, about 135 NGOs are presently involved in agricultural programs alone (see Table 1).

Table 1
NGOs with a Program on Natural Resource Management

Source: ADAB, Computer Data Base on NGOs, ADAB, Dhaka, 1990

Table 1 indicates that there is an increasing trend of NGOs becoming more interested in the Natural Resource Management Program. One study stated: "In the field of Agriculture, NGOs have introduced new crops and cropping pattern. They have also been involved in large scale agricultural extension. Experiments in collective land use and testing of irrigation equipment as assets for landless are now going on".

However, there are only a few NGOs in Bangladesh that promote the importance of sustainable agriculture among the farmers such as PROSHIKA-MUK, Friends in Village Development Bangladesh (FIVDB), CARE International and Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service (RDRS). Their concept of sustainable agriculture "entails an eco- friendly agricultural system whereby people in the community optimize the use of their resources through traditional, indigenous, as well as modern science."

Because sustainable agriculture is still a new concept which at this point in time, and is still at the experimental stage, NGOs' main strategy is directed at meeting the subsistence needs of the farmers (Hirschman 1984).