Abstract
Participatory Forest Management (PFM) is crucial to the implementation of effective forest management and improvement in the living conditions of local communities. But local people involvement in PFM practice is affected by demographic, biophysical, institutional, and socio-economic factors. A cross-sectional survey research design was employed to collect information from 295 households (127 participants and 168 non-participants) by stratified sampling technique followed by a random sampling method. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from primary and secondary sources through structured interview schedules, Focused Group Discussion (FGD), Key Informant Interviews (KII) and field observation. The study employed both descriptive statistic and logistic regression model to compute the socio-economic characteristics and to identify influential factors that affect the community’s involvement in PFM practice respectively. The results of the logistic regression model revealed that household’s family size, educational status, training, benefits derived from the forest, and the number of livestock were positively affected local people’s participation in PFM activities, whereas the distance of the forest from household resident was negatively affected. Apart from demographic, biophysical, institutional, and socio-economic factors granting ownership right, improved awareness, fear of displaced from the forest area, fear of forest lose and moral obligation were enhancing factors while the expansion of agricultural land and settlement, illegal logging, weak punishment, the insufficient fund or lack of incentives, poor forest management trend, conflict of interest, and doubt on the continuity of PFM program were some influential factors that hinder local people’s participation in PFM activities. The study assisted policymakers to inform the influential factors that affect local people’s participation in the study area and formulate effective policy advice to promote PFM practice in the region. Keywords: Participatory forest management; Influential factors; Household; Socio-economics; Wof-Washa District; Policy advice DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/11-17-04 Publication date: September 30 th 2021
Highlights
The forest resources in Ethiopia have been conserved by rules and regulations in the top-down approach system for a long time
The finding of this study showed that holding other variables on their mean values, when benefit derived from the forest increased by 1% probability leads participation in forest management would be increased by 7.86%
4 Conclusion and Recommendations 4.1 Conclusion Local people’s Participation in Participatory Forest Management (PFM) practice is affected by demographic, biophysical, institutional, and socioeconomic factors. These influential factors may enhance or inhibit the involvement of the local communities in participatory forest management program. This survey was conducted in Wof-Washa district by using 127 PFM user and 168 non-user sample respondents
Summary
The forest resources in Ethiopia have been conserved by rules and regulations in the top-down approach system for a long time. This kind of forest conservation practice has not been minimizing the problem of deforestation. The decline of forest capacity at the global and national level is a great problem which affects the livelihoods of people in different ways. According to Tesfaye et al (2011), lack of awareness, negative attitudes, exclusion of local people in the economic benefit-sharing mechanism, lack of incentives, conflict of interest, weak legal actions are taken on illegal forest users, agricultural expansion, overgrazing, unspecified boundary and lack of skills and professional knowledge in the local community have exacerbated the loss of forests in Ethiopia
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