Abstract:
Forests are reported as an important means to adapt and mitigate climate change. Unfortunately,
forest management remain challenging in developing countries in general and particularly in West
Africa, despite the advent of Participatory Forest Management (PFM) concept to slow down
deforestation. PFM was introduced to meet simultaneously the needs of local people and the
conservation of forest resources. The current study sought to explore the contribution of PFM on
the sustainable management of the resources of three different forests in Benin. Multi-stage
sampling techniques was applied for achieving this study. In the first stage of the sampling
procedure, three forest reserves in Lama, Penessoulou and Sota forest were purposively selected
based on experience on PFM and actively participating local community. Both qualitative and
quantitative data were collected from through questionnaires, focus group discussions (FGDs) and
key informant interviews. A total of 436, 458, and 211 respondents were questioned for forest
ecosystem services evaluation, ethnobotanical knowledge assessment and forest governance
assessment, respectively. Moreover, 8 FGDs and 8 key informant interviews were held per study
objective. The results revealed that the considered forest reserves are under deconcentration and
delegation management with a low to acceptable level of governance. The current way of
implementing of PFM approach with low involvement of local people in decision-making process
negatively affected the perception and availability of provisioning services as well as the
community knowledge of forest plant species used for food and cultural purpose. Furthermore, the
implementation failed to enhance the awareness on regulating and supporting services and lessen
the community knowledge on forest plant species used for firewood and timber services purpose
in order to favour the sustainable use of forest resources. In consequence, the forest experiencing
a free access to resources presented a more degraded state of the population stand of the useful
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plant species than the one experiencing controlled access to forest resources. More involvement of
local management committee members in decision-making process added to more sensitization on
indirect ecosystem services and a share of forest direct benefits would improve the forest
governance to achieve the sustainable management of the forest resources.
Description:
A Thesis submitted to the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use and the University of The Gambia, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Degree in Climate Change and Education