Role of forest provisioning services to local livelihoods: based on relative forest income (RFI) approach in southwest Ethiopia coffee forest

Abstract

BackgroundThis study provides empirical evidence, for the contribution of forest provisioning ecosystem services to the local communities done on the Afromontum rainforest of southwest Ethiopia which is endowed with many Fauna and Flora. The study may give some representative evidence for policy-maker on behalf of conservation of the area.MethodologyThis study was done with the approach of focus group discussion and in-depth interviews of the rural community in southwest Ethiopia coffee forest. The role of forest provisioning services analysis was made by relative forest income (RFI) procedure based on the stratification category of the local ethnics and newcomers.ResultsThe overall result indicated that seventeen forest provisioning services collected by the community from natural forest, however income were varied in relation to demographic features, the income from forest for local communities shown too high to which contributes 90.85% of the total income and have a long history of the link between this livelihood and forest. While forest also provides a considerable income for the new resettled community coming from elsewhere in the area but we observed non- forest income were the main source of revenue for this community.ConclusionsThe traditional and the indigenous communities used for access to a finite resource and considered the resource harvested from the forest are the central part of their economy and the relationships between forests and people’s livelihoods particularly for this remote community were complementary. Then planning should take into conceder, in policy perceptive, for supporting this remote community for livelihood improvement and conservation of this natural forest.