Valuation of woodland benefit from the local households perspectives: the case of lare district in southwestern Ethiopia

Abstract

Woodland provide a wide range of benefits to rural people, ranging from being as a source of new agricultural land, non-timber forest products, timbers and provide a range of on-site ecological services. The world’s population today is expanding by 92 million people each year. Rural people pose threats to the forest in general and to some species in particular for the means of generating subsistence and income. It has long been argued that, the forest income in general is relatively more important for the low income households and as a corollary that overuse and degradation will hurt them more. The Gambella lowland woodland has more than 106 woody plant species documented. The major objective was to determine the economic values of Lare district woodland’s uses and non-uses value from the local households’ heads perspectives. The study was done in Gambella National Regional States of Ethiopia in Southwestern part of the country. Six kebeles were selected purposely from Lare wereda as research target population. In selection of the representative sample size, simple random sampling tecnique was designed and applied. Quantitative data were collected from 200 households’ heads of those six kebeles using structured questionnaire. All respondents were farmers and livestock husbandry. Willingness to pay data was collected using bidding game model. Quantitative data were collected and analyzed using both descriptive and econometric model with the help of SPSS version 17 software. Timber product (e.g log product) was seen more significant to local people livelihood support in which about 86% of respondents were observed from the range of 100-301+ numbers of timber per household per year. Moreove; local community in the study area were more interested in conservation of soil and water inwhich about 67% of them pay their maximum WTP at equal or above the bid (30-60) ETB per household per year. For management of fish resources (e.g. Catfish), the sample households’ heads who are willing to contribute their maximum WTP below bid were 73.5%. The reason for concentration of many respondents in paying their maximum MaxWTP below starting bid level for management of catfish resource is due to not using it frequently for their daily consumption since it is seasonal use which they are not usually used it. A Tobit model was employed to identify the effect of explanatory variable in WTP of households’ heads for management of total woodland resources. For Tobit Model result; total income, and family size were found significant at p<0.001 in WTP for management of total woodland. Hence; the result indicates that community in the study area is lacking of a good knowledge about the importance of some uses and non-uses values of woodland. Therefore; government and non-government involvement is needed in provision of training from the different aspect of natural resources management and policies.