The ESA Global Development Assistance (GDA) Forest Management activity is supporting the World Bank (WB) in the preparation of a multisectoral coastal resilience programme in Bangladesh, designed to help safeguard vulnerable coastal communities, protect natural capital, and improve sustainable livelihoods. This collaboration focuses on using satellite Earth Observation (EO) to strengthen the evidence base for planning, monitoring, and managing forested and coastal landscapes, including the Sundarbans and surrounding regions.
By delivering accurate, consistent, and updated information on mangrove extent and forest change, ESA GDA is helping national institutions and the WB make better-informed decisions for resilient coastal development and long-term forest management. The work feeds directly into the design of the Bank’s upcoming investment project and supports the Bangladesh Forest Department (BFD) in its ambition to operate its own monitoring system in the future.
This story highlights the initial EO developments undertaken for Bangladesh. The first phase has produced baseline EO products for two priority sites identified jointly with the WB and BFD. These datasets will now be tested, refined, and adapted with user feedback, paving the way for operational uptake.
Coastal forests facing rising pressures
Bangladesh’s coastal zone is highly exposed to environmental stress, including tidal flooding, storm surges, salinity intrusion, and erosion. The Sundarbans mangrove ecosystem, the world’s largest contiguous mangrove forest, plays a vital role in buffering these hazards and supporting local livelihoods.
During early discussions with the World Bank and BFD, it became clear that while the core Sundarbans mangrove area remains relatively stable, restoration sites outside the Sundarbans require better monitoring, especially to assess the success of mangrove afforestation efforts undertaken since 2015.
At the same time, unplanned deforestation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), including in protected areas such as the Matamuhuri and Rankhiang Reserved Forests, remains a major concern, creating an urgent need for up-to-date information between the national 2023 land use map and present conditions.
These dual challenges, coastal resilience and inland forest change, form the basis of the Bangladesh case study under GDA Forest Management.
Using EO to strengthen mangrove restoration and inland forest monitoring
To address national and World Bank needs, the GDA Forest consortium delivered several baseline EO products using freely available Copernicus Sentinel data at 10 m resolution. These include:
- Mangrove extent mapping (2024): Sentinel-2 imagery was used to map mangrove areas across a large coastal area of approximately 52,000 km², distinguishing open from closed mangrove classes. The first version of the map achieved an overall accuracy above 90% offering a robust foundation for assessing restoration success and guiding future investments.
Figure 1: Mangrove Extent Map for Coastal Bangladesh, Including Sampling Points Used for Validation (Credit: GAF AG)
- Tree Cover mapping (2020): this identifies all tree-covered areas, both inside and outside forests, across a 13,586 km² area spanning Rangamati, Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar and Bandarban. It achieved over 90% overall accuracy, effectively capturing trees from dense forests to isolated individuals.
- Tree Cover Density (TCD) (2020): adapted from the pan-tropical Copernicus Land Monitoring Service, it provides proportional canopy cover in 10% classes. TCD performs well across the region’s diverse terrain, from dense hilltop forests to more open lowland areas.
Figure 2: Tree Cover Map (Left) and Tree Cover Density Map (Right) for 2020 in Bangladesh (Credit: GAF AG)
- Tree Cover Disturbance Monitoring (TCDM) (2018–2024): uses bi-weekly Sentinel-1 radar observations, to capture disturbance events over time, including in the Kassalong Reserved Forest. Radar’s ability to penetrate cloud cover makes it especially valuable during Bangladesh’s long monsoon season. The system can also be applied to new data streams in near real time.
Together, these products offer the first harmonised EO baseline for forest and coastal vegetation monitoring across Bangladesh’s priority landscapes.
Ensuring uptake
A key focus of the activity is to ensure that Bangladesh’s national institutions can interpret, validate, and ultimately integrate EO-derived products into their workflows. Users will have dedicated time to test the datasets, review methodologies, and provide structured feedback through meetings and surveys. This feedback will guide product customisation in subsequent phases.
The work in Bangladesh demonstrates the high potential of EO to complement national monitoring systems, offering cost-effective, high-resolution, and regularly updated insights that support sustainable forest management, coastal protection, and climate-resilient planning.
In the coming months, the consortium will refine the products, expand analytical capabilities, and finalise recommendations for operational adoption across the World Bank’s coastal resilience programme and within BFD.
By embedding these EO capabilities into national systems, Bangladesh will be better equipped to monitor forest and mangrove dynamics, strengthen climate adaptation efforts, and meet both domestic and international reporting commitments.
