Forest benefits and willingness to pay for sustainable forest management
Introduction
Forest products constitute important sources of income for local communities in many developing countries (Gordillo et al., 2019; Kazungu et al., 2020). In this regard, different studies report forest-based benefits both from private woodlots and public forests make up between 12% and54% of rural household income (Tesfaye et al., 2011; Kazungu et al., 2020; Tadesse et al., 2021), indicating the importance of income from forest resources. Given this important role, it is argued that the sustainable management of forests is closely linked with the direct (Kazungu et al., 2020) and indirect benefits (Bamwesigye et al., 2020) local communities obtain from forests. These direct and indirect benefits in turn govern communities' preference for sustainable forests management mechanisms, which in turn are influenced by preferences for forest access and accessibility that define local communities' livelihood (Gordillo et al., 2019). However, other factors including ownership feelings as well as inclusive and participatory decision-making related to access and accessibility also influence preferences for alternative forest management mechanisms.
Local communities' sense of ownership, participation in decision-making and benefits they obtain from forests are important to sustainable forest management. In many developing countries where rural communities depend on forests for livelihood, alternative forest governance structures that consider farmers' attitudes, sense of ownership, participation and benefits have been implemented. Among these forest governance structures are community-based forest management (Takahashi and Todo, 2012), farmer-managed natural regeneration (Haglund et al., 2011; Weston et al., 2015) and state-led participatory forest management (Giday, 2013). All these forest governance structures may not be practically implemented in such forestlands as the Desa'a forest in Tigray (north-east Ethiopia), which is designated as a National Forest Priority Area (NFPA) and owned and mainly managed by the state. Coupled with the weak management of the Desa'a forest (Giday, 2013), effective implementation of any forest governance mechanisms that do not account for local communities' sense of ownership and economic needs may not materialize (Gordillo et al., 2019; Woldie and Tadesse, 2019). In such cases where the state has full control over ownership and enforcement in the use of forest resources, policy mechanisms that involve local communities at different stages of decision-making can contribute not only to sustainable forest management but also sustaining forest-based benefits to local communities (Tesfaye et al., 2011).
Crucially therefore, whatever forest management governance structures are put in place, they need to balance direct economic needs of local communities with ecological sustainability1 for effective and sustainable forest management (Giergiczny et al., 2015). In this regard, Tadesse et al. (2021) report that local communities would be willing to engage in forest conservation programs if direct economic needs are integrated into forest management plans. For integrating local communities' economic needs into forest management plans, there is a need to capture and understand the economic value local communities place on and preference for alternative forest management mechanisms. The Desa'a forest in north-east Ethiopia is owned and managed by the state and protected from encroachment (albeit weakly), with local communities participating in decision-making related to selective and restricted access to the forest. In the process, both parties work to ensure balance between meeting ecological conditions and economic needs. For effective and sustainable management of forests and their resources therefore, tradeoffs that local forest communities make among ecological conditions and economic interests are important.
With this in the hindsight, this paper reports results on how forest-based benefits influence preferences for (more) sustainable forest management attributes (characteristics).Based on this, we contribute to the literature in two ways. On the one hand, we consider a demand and policy-relevant attribute (described as forest products) that accounts for the economic needs of local communities from the forest. Then, we consider two other demand and policy-relevant ecological attributes (soil and water conservation and absorption of heat wave) that reflect ecological functions local communities put value on. Considering such contrasting attributes that reflect competing interests(economic needs versus ecological functions) helps explore the tradeoffs forest communities make between forest-based benefits (economic needs) and environmental amenities (ecological services), which influence preferences for forest management mechanisms. Based on this, choices elicited through discrete choice experiment were analyzed using mixed logit model to explore preferences and estimate WTP for alternative forest management attributes.
Section snippets
Desa'a state forest, study areas and sample data
Desa'a forest, located in north-east Tigray (Ethiopia), is designated as a National Forest Priority Area (Gebreegziabher, 1999), meaning the state has full control over ownership and enforcement over its management. Geographically, it is situated between 13° 20′ and 14° 10′ North latitude and 39° 32′ and 39° 55′ East longitude (Fig. 1), along the western escarpment of the Great Rift Valley facing the Afar depression. Estimates show that the forest covers an area of about 41,000 ha (Sebhatleab,
Attributes of forest management
We start by hypothesizing that benefits communities obtain from forests represent key factors in determining farmers' preferences for the sustainable management of forests. Our argument is for people to be willing to commit to sustainable forest management, their needs and priorities shall be considered. As documented in the literature (Tesfaye et al., 2011; Kazungu et al., 2020; Tadesse et al., 2021), local communities earn significant part of their income from forests. To insure sustainable
Benefits from forest
The Desa'a forest provides different products and resources that constitute some of the most important livelihood sources. The livelihood sources from the Desa'a forest come in different forms (Table 2). Among the most important forest products (resources) that households obtain from the Desa'a forest include water (80%), firewood (62.1%), fodder for livestock (53.8%) and honey (46.3%). Many households also reported that they obtain materials to construct farm implements (29.2%) and building
Conclusion
In this study, we considered a forestland where the governance structure is such that the state owns the forest and enforces selective access to rural households. In the literature, it is documented that forest-based benefits make up an important part of household income of forest communities. Similarly, more than 95% of the sample households consider the forestland as an important livelihood source. Interestingly, local communities place high stakes on the forest despite forest income makes up
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Tewodros Tadesse: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Data curation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Software. Gebreegziabher Teklay: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft. Dawit W. Mulatu: Methodology, Writing – review & editing, Software. Meley Mekonen Rannestad: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing – review & editing. Tigabu Molla Meresa: Methodology, Writing – review & editing. Dawit Woldelibanos:
Declaration of Competing Interest
None.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank enumerators and facilitators in different villages who worked hard to conduct the choice experiments. We also would like to thank farmers who sat for long periods to provide data. This work was supported by the “Steps toward Sustainable Forest Management with Local Communities in Tigray, northern Ethiopia [with grant number: ETH-13-0018]” project financed by the Norwegian Support for Higher Education and Development (NORHED/NORAD), Norway. We thank NORAD for the
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