The Roles of Community Participation in Forest Management (PFM) inImproving Forest Conditionsand People’s Livelihood: A case study of Hadiya Zone, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethiopia is gifted with immense wealth of biological resources due to its diverse topography, soil and climate; however, Forest resources in Ethiopia have suffered decades of mismanagement due mainly to loosely defined property relations over it. As one of the solutions, Participatory Forest Management (PFM) system was introduced during the early 1990s by some NGOs.This study tried to investigate the role ofcommunity participation on forest management and its role for improving forest condition and the livelihoods of the participant household.Socio-economic data from households and NGOs, GOs in PFM forest and forest inventory data was collected from both PFM and non-PFM forest sites. The study examined the change of PFM application on forest resources conditions and livelihood of participant local communities on PFM program at least the PFM project life time comparing household incomes of PFM and NPFM. With regard to forests in PFM and NPFM; the density and frequency of woody plant species found in the sampled plots have shown differences not only between forests but also within the plots. The density of the species at different DBH and height classes also showed difference in both PFM and NPFM forests. DBH and height classes in both forests shown inverted “J” shape of normal distribution pattern but the density, frequency, dominance and IVI shown quite difference between them. The DBH and Height-class distribution analyses have shown that there are similar trends in both diameter and height classes. The result also revealed that varied dependency of the household has been shown in both PFM and non-PFM forest sites. Although both PFM and NPFM households are dependent on forest resources to get livelihood incomes from it, PFM households are benefited and got more incomes from forest resources than NPFM households. The study concluded that when accompanied with complementary non-forest based livelihood activities, PFM helped to diversify income sources, increase household income,and build household income improvement conditions. This reduces dependence of communities on forests for livelihoods. The study recommend that PFM system is a crucial management of forest resources by the local community in collaboration with NGOs and GOs and its progress should be assessed in a short periods of time before PFM project terminates.