Socio-economic gains from participatory forest management and their influence on REDD implementation in Iringa district

Abstract

This study was conducted to assess the potentials of forests under PFM to local communities and their influence on management of the REDD initiative in Iringa District. Specifically, it aimed at assessing the community members' access to different forest products and analyzing contribution of the resource to total household income. Data from 120 households were collected in four villages of Itagutwa, Kiwele, Kitapilimwa and Mfyome in Kalenga Division. Purposeful and random sampling techniques were used to select the forests and households respectively, where their information was captured by structured questionnaire and key informant interview. Descriptive statistics and Gini coefficients were used to analyze the collected data. Results show that forests contributes about 12.4% of household income and more than 97% of household use forest resource mainly as a source of energy and building poles. No household confirmed to depend on forest as the only source of income rather they involve themselves in other activities like farming, livestock keeping, business and wage laborers. Households use and harvest forests products differently, those who are considered to be wealth are able to harvest and process timber and non timber products while the poor only depend on it as a source of subsistent foods and medicine. It has been also found that women earn less compared to men from forest resource because more income comes from honey, timber and charcoal activities that are largely undertaken by men. The study concludes that that the existing type of forest management has not been efficient and equidistributional enough to serve as a motivation for REDD implementation, coming into the recommendation that more awareness is needed to the households to be well informed about REDD requirements and what it entails.