Promises and Contests of Participatory Forest Management (PFM) Scheme within Kafa Biosphere Reserve, Southwest Ethiopia

Befikadu Melesse Taye

doi:10.7176/jrdm/65-01

Abstract

The PFM scheme; where the community-based natural resource management has been receiving growing scientific attention over the past three decades. Most studies, however, focus on investigating institutional designs and outcomes and pay scant attention to how community-based natural resource management arrangements are carried out in practice. Therefore, this study focused to examine the possible promises with the establishment and actual practices of PFM scheme and visible contests that needs solutions to sustain the scheme in Kafa forest coffee Biosphere Reserve. To realize this thought 16 PFM sites of five districts of Kafa zone were purposively studied by collecting primary data through focused group discussions with forest management committee members and triangulated site based actual assessment practices with members to be evidenced about the promises and available contests of/on PFM scheme. Through an in-depth survey study in all of the participatory forest management (PFM) sites in Kafa zone, southwest Ethiopia, this article demonstrates a significant promises and contests between the PFM forest management plan and actual local forest management practices. The study confirms the usefulness of a practice-based approach to understand and explain how a newly introduced institutional arrangement is acted upon by local actors situated in their social, political and historical context as promises. On the other hand, the lagging commitment from the government agents, illegal users, uncontrolled forest use pressures and unbalanced commitment among the forest user group were proved as greatest upcoming contests on the sustainability of Kafa forest coffee Biosphere reserve in general and PFM of each site in particular. The findings also contribute to empirical knowledge useful to initiate dialog and to critically reflect on whether and what kind of intervention is actually needed to positively influence forest management practices on the ground for its sustainability based on the plan. Keywords: PFM arrangement; promises and Contests of PFM; practice-based approach DOI: 10.7176/JRDM/65-01 Publication date: May 31 st 2020

Highlights

The afro-montane coffee forests contained within the UNESCO Kafa Biosphere Reserve in the Southwest of Ethiopia represent some of the country’s last remaining cloud forests (Ben DeVries et al, 2012)
These forests represent an important national carbon store managed by the local communities with shared responsibilities with the government based on forest management plan at each participatory forest management (PFM) sites (Alemayehu et al, 2015)
In the Ethiopian context, PFM is recognized as a co-governance institutional arrangement where forest management responsibilities and use rights are legally shared between a government agency and a community-based organization (CBO), such as forest user groups or forest cooperatives (Winberg, 2010)

Summary

Introduction

The afro-montane coffee forests contained within the UNESCO Kafa Biosphere Reserve in the Southwest of Ethiopia represent some of the country’s last remaining cloud forests (Ben DeVries et al, 2012). These forests represent an important national carbon store managed by the local communities with shared responsibilities with the government based on forest management plan at each PFM sites (Alemayehu et al, 2015). In the Ethiopian context, PFM is recognized as a co-governance institutional arrangement where forest management responsibilities and use rights are legally shared between a government agency and a community-based organization (CBO), such as forest user groups or forest cooperatives (Winberg, 2010). The inception of PFM in Ethiopia was considered a radical departure from the centralized and technocratic forest management style to a more inclusive arrangement

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