Rural Residents’ Participation Intention in Community Forestry-Challenge and Prospect of Community Forestry in Sri Lanka

E M B P Ekanayake,Shahzad Ahmad,Yi Xie

doi:10.3390/f12081050

Abstract

The contribution of local communities has become widely recognized as a better alternative in forest management than the traditional command-based control approach. However, several years later of implementation, most programs were failed due to a lack of community participation, imposing an uncertain future for community forestry. This paper examines rural Sri Lankans’ participation intention in community forestry (CF) program by using the Probit regression model. Randomly selected 300 individuals representing both CF members and non-CF members were interviewed for the study. The study results indicate that rural residents’ intention in future CF program negatively correlated with the participation status (CF membership) of individuals. Accordingly, CF members show less participation intention in future CF program than non-CF members. Socio-economic variables such as education level (p < 0.01) and the occupation of head of the household (p < 0.05) and total household income (p < 0.01) have significant influences on individuals’ participation intention in CF. In addition, non-monetary benefits derived from CF and perception on the product regulation and conflict mitigation are also appeared to significantly and positively affect villagers’ intention. The findings also revealed the knowledge gap on the purpose of the CF program and CF policy design. Hence, require immediate attention to improve awareness. Moreover, failure to raise local people’s participation intention in CF may indicate inadequate or ineffective government policies. Therefore, the Department of Forest Conservation should take sound measures to ensure that community-based forest management policies are consistently implemented at different administrative levels across the country and its rightness should be evaluated strictly.

Highlights

Information gathered in the present study indicated that socio-economic variables such as gender, age, and land holdings do not have a significant influence on both to be a Community forestry (CF) member and their intention on participation
The study found that being a member of the CF program negatively affects participation intention in CF
It is argued that the low level of education of program members, lack of youth involvement, and product regulation issues were the reasons for CF members to quit their intention to participate in CF

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Community forestry (CF) is increasingly recognized as one of the key alternatives to centralized state-led management to tackle the loss of forests and achieve sustainable use of forest ecosystems, as well as social well-being in the developing world [1]. More than half a billion people in developing countries are dependent on the forest managed by CF for their livelihoods [2]. Around 732 million hectares of forest representing 62 countries in the developing world (28% of the world’s forests) are managed under community-based approaches [1,3]. Further expanding the scale of CF is of great significance in developing countries

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