Assessment of Opportunities and Challenges to Established Community Based MRV: Study in the Bale Mountain Eco-region REDD+ Project, Southeastern Ethiopia

Abstract

Though communities are supposed to participate in the whole processes of REDD+ implementation, there is no strong community based monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) system fitting the context of REDD+ processes. This study asses opportunities and challenges of developing appropriate community based MRV in Bale Eco-region REDD+ project. Data were collected through survey questionnaire administered to 154 sampled households and supplemented by focus group discussion and key informant interviews.Opportunities and challenges were discussed through percentage and frequency results of variables. Accordingly, about 27.9% of sampled households were participating in forest patrolling activity, 1.3% of the respondents can take GPS for boundary demarcation and other purpose and 12.3% of the respondents can record both illegal actions and development activities in the forest concession including regeneration status. 67.5% of sampled households responded that community based monitoring reporting and verification has great contribution in reducing both deforestation and forest degradation. Furthermore, about 64.3% of sampled respondents lack skills to data gathering, forest inventories, data analysis, interpretation and reporting and 26.6% of respondents lack capacities and basic infrastructure (electricity, internet, hardware, software). 62.3% of sampled households were not reporting any forest monitoring achievements, 26.6% of the respondents were reporting to Oromia Forest and Wildlife Enterprise, 4.5% of the respondents were reporting to Farm Africa and SOS Sahel Ethiopia and 57.1% of the sampled households recommended new reporting channel. The study also found that 90.3% of sampled households preferred to share benefit at household level.Binary logistic regression analysis result revealed that age, family size, marital status, education level, income from forest product, total land holding, distance from forest and benefit distribution were not influencing participation in community based MRV. Sex, Income source, MRV know-how, REDD+ awareness and MRV training were factors affecting participation in community based MRV. In summary, communities should be trained on the skills needed to undertake community based MRV. Simple data collection formats and reporting systems should be developed through participatory approach. Moreover, the government should create appropriate incentive mechanism in order for communities to strongly undertake community based MRV. Keywords: Community based MRV; Incentive; Binary logistic regression models; Opportunities and Challenges; REDD+. DOI: 10.7176/JRDM/90-01 Publication date: January 31 st 2023