The World Bank (WB) is helping Bangladesh carry out a series of studies to develop a program for sustainable development of the Sundarbans, the world's single largest mangrove forest in the country's southwestern part.

A comprehensive plan based on these studies would be developed to integrate prioritized interventions to address the region's main conservation and development challenges.

The studies will be drawn upon the main challenges of poverty reduction, climate change adaptation, and biodiversity conservation in the Sundarbans, a WB release was quoted as saying by national news agency BSS on Sunday.

The studies, expected to be completed by September 2011, will take full account of the distinction between protected areas ( where resource extraction is not allowed) and surrounding inhabited areas for assessing the development challenges of the Sundarbans, and identifying alternative interventions to address them.

Bangladesh and India share the world's largest mangrove forest Sundarbans and 62 percent of the Sundarbans falls in Bangladesh. Due to its rich biodiversity and unique ecosystem, the ecological importance of Sundarban Reserve Forest is immense.

The Sundarbans is home to an estimated 425 species of wildlife, including 300 species of birds and 42 species of mammals, as well as the Royal Bengal Tiger.

Over 3.5 million people live in the Sundarbans Ecologically Critical Area, with no permanent settlement within the Sundarban Reserve Forest. Among them, about 1.2 million people directly depend on Sundarbans for their livelihoods.

The study will integrate the ecological dimension and importance of the Sundarbans' biodiversity while maintaining a careful distinction between protected and inhabited areas to ensure that conservation of the protected areas can be upheld.