Households’ dependence on community forest and their contribution to participatory forest management: evidence from rural Ethiopia

In recent decades, there has been a major shift in natural resource conservation policies in developing countries, and community-based natural resource management has become the integral part of the policies. Nonetheless, the link between the local communities’ dependence on forest resources for their livelihood and the likelihood of the success of community forest management has been understudied. Thus, this study investigates how forest dependence influences the contribution of local communities to the management of community forest, using the data collected from 190 households participating in community forest management in rural Ethiopia. It was found that the sample households derived almost 38% of their annual income from community forest. Moreover, results from mixed effects linear regression models show that forest dependence promotes contribution to collective action in the management of community forest. When households derive more income from the community forest relative to their total income, they contribute more to the management of the community forest. This suggests that the more the households depend on the community forest for their livelihood, the more they value the resource and the more they participate in the management of the forest. Thus, the results underline that the success of local communities in managing community forest may be significantly influenced by their level of dependence on the resources from the forest.