| Abstract | After a long uncertainty, distribution of final benefits among the beneficiary participants from social forestry in the Government forestland started since 1999 in Bangladesh. Actually, social forestry was launched in the forestland with Woodlot and Agroforestry plantations in 1981 by the ADB funded community forestry project in the Northern part of the country. Several projects had been taken after the end of the project without distributing benefits among the participants until 1997. Finally, Forestry Sector Project was taken in the year 1998 to harvest the plantations raised in pervious ADB funded projects. In this way, participants started to receive final benefits at last. In this connection, it was necessary to know if the project could make any significant changes in socioeconomic conditions of the beneficiary groups after involvement in the social forestry. This study was undertaken based on the theme. The study was conducted in the forestland of Dhaka Forest Division comprising four different community groups Woodlotl, Agroforestryl, Woodlot2 and Agroforestry2. The plantations of the woodlotl and Agroforestryl community groups were not harvested during the study period. But plantations of woodlot2 and Agroforstry2 community groups were harvested and benefits were distributed among the participants. Economic welfare like income, asset, employment and environmental sustainability; social development like housing condition, household water, sanitary latrine, health, education, gender and equity; Good governance like transparency, accountability, ownership and participation of community groups before after involvement in the social forestry program were analyzed through questionnaire survey, key persons interview, groups discussion, physical observation among the four community groups to find out the impact of the social forestry project including variation of impacts among the community groups. Study also tried to find out the deficiencies in linkages among the stakeholders of the present social forestry project and its consequences, to suggest possible solutions. Findings of the study showed that significant development in economic welfare and social development occurred among the participants those received final harvest benefits from the social forestry project. Final harvest benefits helped them to generate additional income sources. Transparency and accountability of the project activity found weak, though participation and ownership development among the respondents increased considerably. The study revealed that incomes from Agroforestry were significantly higher then woodlot and there were significant variation in social forestry income among the four community groups too. The study also disclosed that the social forestry income played significant role in total income generation of the community people. On the other hand, the study pointed out that the linkage of the stakeholders of the present Social Forestry Project were weak except the linkage between Donor Agency and Forest Department. Weak linkages were the sources of ineffective training, weak functioning of MC and TFF committee, weak performance of stakeholders, weak transparency and accountability etc. Only developing strong linkage the Donor Agency could make Forest Department to fulfill most of the conditions and get commendable progress in project activities by the Forest Department. Effective training of both participants and filed level forest officials, empowerment of Management committee and TFF committee in real sense, potential monitoring works including NGOs by the authority, development of strong linkage among the stakeholders are essential to overcome the shortfalls of the project and to generate more development of the socioeconomic conditions of the community participants |