Social Perceptions of Forest Ecosystem Services in the Democratic Republic of Congo (original) (raw)
Related papers
Ecosystem Services, 2019
Human culture has an important influence on how forests are utilised, yet its influence on ecosystem service (ES) use and valuation remains underexplored. We address this gap by investigating how livelihood strategy and ethnicity affect local peoples' perceptions of forest ES in Cameroon. Data were collected through 20 focus-group discussions in villages of farmers (Oku and Banso) and pastoralists (Fulani) in two mountains. Pastoralists identified fewer ES than farmers, and used some ES differently (e.g. wildlife was only valued for aesthetics instead of as food). Some differences were also observed between farmer groups (e.g. identity link with the forest unique to Oku farmers). While water availability was perceived as the most important forest ES for all groups, the second most important was fodder for pastoralists and medicine resources for farmers. Pastoralists also identified fewer useful forest species, most likely related to their origin in the lowlands. Our findings help highlight trade-offs in important ES for different groups (fodder vs. medicine resources), and in access to certain ES (e.g. Fulani pastoralists' unequitable access to tourism and forest income). We show that locals dependent on provisioning ES are not a homogenous group and that the wider socio-cultural context has to be taken into account for conservation and development projects to be successful.
2021
The perception of ecosystem goods and services by local residents is studied in Brazzaville, around the periurban forest of Djoumouna. This study, which documents the ecosystem services provided to communities by this ecosystem facing anthropogenic degradation, evaluates the understanding and consideration of these functions, according to socioprofessional categories. Socioeconomic and ethnobotanical surveys conducted among the group of informants are supported by direct field observations and literature review. The data collected within a 2 km radius around the forest were subjected to descriptive and statistical analysis. The group of informants, including all socioprofessional strata, was organised into 4 age groups and involved 143 heads of household aged from 15 to over 45. The survey reveals 14 ecosystem services that fall into three categories. The provisioning services included food, wood energy, pharmacopoeia, and wood services. The regulatory functions cited are maintainin...
Human Ecology, 2018
Forest management practices that aim to mitigate the threats of deforestation and forest degradation can inadvertently threaten the ability of forest-dependent local populations to meet basic daily sustenance needs. Stakeholder engagement can help find common ground between environmental goals and the livelihood needs of local populations. A starting point for local stakeholder engagement is to gather insights into how forest management differentially impacts the livelihoods and well-being of these populations, which may be quite heterogeneous in their perspectives and livelihood needs. Towards this end, we conducted semistructured first-person interviews in forest-dependent communities in Cameroon about perspectives on and suggestions about forest resources and management. This study provides insights into commonalities and differences of perspectives within and among local populations and supports the use of stakeholder engagement strategies that facilitate bidirectional communication and take into consideration diverse perspectives and priorities.
Validation of scientific findings from satellite remote sensing against local ecological knowledge could make the interpretation of forest cover patterns more robust. In this paper, we examine local perceptions of forest cover change in parishes around Budongo and Bugoma for a 30-year period (1985e2014), compare the results with those obtained from remote sensing (Twongyirwe et al., 2015), and interrogate whether the perceptions could be related to livelihood typologies. First, we characterise household strategies for the entire landscape to place livelihood strategies of communities in deforestated areas in a broader local context. An in-depth questionnaire was administered to 706 households in 13 parishes situated in 4 AgroEcological Zones (AEZs). The data included household demographic characteristics, energy use, cropping and livestock husbandry, and seasonal time- and labour-budgets. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Cluster Analysis (CA) were employed to help identify dominant structures in the data. Secondly, the 375 households in 7 parishes around Budongo and Bugoma forests (part of the 706) responded to additional questions that sought their perceptions on the forest cover trend. The PCA results for the entire landscape show that significant variation amongst households is mainly related to the cultivation time input, on-farm income particularly from cropping activities, livestock husbandry, demographic characteristics, agricultural extension activities, and cultivation labour input. Hierarchical CA shows that households at the landscape level fall into about nine different types, with variation in spatial distribution. The analysis suggests that poor households do live near forested regions, and that the rural poor are more reliant on forest products than peri-urban populations. Regarding perceptions of forest cover change, the majority (70.1%: n ¼ 375) of the respondents in the parishes think that there has been a decline in forest cover, and this percentage is larger than the percentage of non-respondents (18.9%), those that thought it had increased (5.6%), not changed (3.7%), and those that did not know (1.6%). In addition, perceptions on forest change were significantly related to the household livelihood typologies (X 2 ¼ 623.4, df ¼ 4, p ¼ 0.000): respondents who perceived forest cover as having declined and those that provided no response belonged to cluster 2 (“low income mixed farming households”), which is also the dominant livelihood typology around these forests. While the data largely suggest that there is a remarkable agreement between remote sensing results and local knowledge on forest change, and that local people may play a big role in filling data gaps where a dearth of information is prevalent (or where remote sensing evidence is fuzzy), there is a clear signal that people in different social classes and age groups can have very different views on what the change in forest cover might be despite what the remote sensing data show. This might have policy implications if decision makers tend to come from the groups that are not likely to have perceived forest cover change, or base their judgement on views from certain social classes. This implies that it is important to have the remote sensing data available as a counter balance to local perception (and vice versa) and therefore these data should be considered concurrently.
Perceptions of ecosystem services provided by tropical forests to local populations in Cameroon
Ecosystem Services, 2019
In Central Africa, local populations are deeply dependent on tropical forests, which provide numerous ecosystem services (ES). For the first time in Central Africa, we assessed the perceptions of ES provided by tropical forests to local populations, considering three land allocation types: a protected area, a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)certified logging concession, and three community forests. We conducted a questionnaire survey with 225 forest stakeholders in southeastern Cameroon, combining an open-ended question and 16 directed questions to evaluate the perceptions of ES significance and abundance, respectively. The ES most frequently reported as significant were provisioning (93% of respondents) and cultural & amenity services (68%), whereas regulating services were less mentioned (16%). Bushmeat provision was the only ES perceived as highly significant but not very abundant. There were slight variations of perceptions among forest land allocation types and respondents, suggesting a relative homogeneity in ES abundance. For further integrative ES assessment, we suggest quantifying ES with complementary ecological and economic approaches, such as meat provision, recreation, tourism, timber provision, spiritual experience, firewood provision, water quality regulation, and inspiration for culture. We also give three concrete recommendations for forest management, the most urgent being to provide sources of protein alternative to bushmeat.
Quantifying the Use of Forest Ecosystem Services by Local Populations in Southeastern Cameroon
Sustainability
In order to improve sustainability and design adequate management strategies in threatened tropical forests, integrated assessments of the use of ecosystem services are needed, combining biophysical, social, and economic approaches. In particular, no integrated ecosystem services (ES) assessment has been conducted in Central Africa, where rural communities deeply depend on forests in a high-poverty context. Here, we aimed to quantify the use of ES provided by tropical forests to local populations in the Dja area (Cameroon), identify its determinants and evaluate its sustainability. We conducted various interviews and field surveys with 133 households in three villages, focusing on three provisioning services (bushmeat, firewood, and timber), and five cultural services (cultural heritage, inspiration, spiritual experience, recreation, and education). Local populations consumed a mean of 56 kg of bushmeat/person/year (hunting zones covering on average 213 km2), 1.17 m3 of firewood/per...
Understanding cultural preferences toward different ecosystem services is of great importance for conservation and development planning. While cultural preferences toward plant species have been long studied in the field of plant utilisation, the effects of ethnicity on ecosystem services identification and valuation has received little attention. We assessed the effects of ethnicity toward different ecosystem services at three similar forest islands in northern Kenya inhabited by Samburu and Boran pastoralists. Twelve focus groups were organised in each mountain, to evaluate the ecosystem services provided by the forest, and assess which plant species are most important for provisioning different ecosystem services. While water was always identified as the most important ecosystem service, the second most important differed; and some were only mentioned by one ethnic group or in one location. Preferred plant species for food, fodder, medicine resources, poles and firewood followed the same pattern. Our results showed that ethnicity and location affect ecosystem services' identification and importance ranking. This should be taken into account by decision-makers, e.g. as restricted access and regulated extraction is likely to affect people differently. Conservation and development projects would be more effective if they were initiated with an understanding of how people already use and value their forests.
Livelihoods of households living near Yangambi Biosphere Reserve, Democratic Republic of Congo
2019
Forests in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) cover more than 100 million hectares (ha), are home to thousands of plant and animal species, and regulate continental scale water cycles and global climate change [1]. Nearly 40 million people live in or near these forests. They are amongst the poorest and most vulnerable globally, despite the wealth of natural resources around them. Increasing demand for food, shelter, energy and income contributes significantly to deforestation and forest degradation [2] and links critical development and environmental challenges with local and global implications. The future of DRC’s Forests depends on creating pathways out of poverty for those living around and within the forests while sustainably managing resources.
Understanding the multiple ways people value forests is important, as individual values regarding nature have been shown to partly determine willingness to participate in conservation initiatives. As individual values are influenced by past experiences, the way people value forests may be related to the ecosystem services they use and receive. We here aim to investigate if people value forests because of material and non-material benefits forest provide (material and non-material values), and if these values are defined by previous experiences associated with using forest resources and having frequent contact with forests. By interviewing 363 residents across 20 landscapes varying in forest cover in a post-frontier region in Amazonia, we evaluated: (1) if the use of forest resources—especially bushmeat, important for sustenance and cash income in virtually all tropical forests—is associated with attributing higher material value to forests; (2) whether the contact with forest (estimated by local forest cover and visits to forests) is associated with attributing higher non-material value to forests. As expected, respondents from households where hunting occurs and bushmeat consumption is more frequent attributed higher material value to forests , and those living in more deforested landscapes and that visited forests less often attributed lower non-material value to forests. The importance of bushmeat in shaping the way people value forests suggests that encouraging the sustainable use of this product will encourage forest conservation. Results also point to a potential dangerous reinforcing cycle: low forest cover and the loss of contact with forests may erode forest values and facilitate further deforestation. Engaging rural communities in forest conservation initiatives is challenging yet urgent in degraded landscapes, although harnessing appreciation for bush-meat could offer a starting point.
Introduction: Forests play a crucial role in the lives of millions of people worldwide by providing material and non-material contributions. Despite forests' paramount importance from ecological, economic, and cultural perspectives, the long-term relationship between forests and local communities living in their proximity is often an undervalued contribution to our understanding of local ecological knowledge systems and forest changes. Methods: We studied the interrelationships between the Mandinka peoples and forests in an understudied area of West Africa, the Gambia's Lower River Region (LRR). Through 35 semi-structured interviews, we documented the forests' contributions to local Mandinka peoples and their perception of forest changes. We also used geographic information systems (GIS software) for remote sensing satellite imagery to establish a baseline for these complex connections and changes. Results: This research revealed the crucial importance of the forest's contributions to Mandinka communities and specifically to their psychological well-being. In addition, the interviewees revealed how ongoing socioeconomic changes are affecting the human-forest relationship and possibly eroding the local ethnoforestry knowledge in the LRR of the Gambia. The most common forest contributions are those that provide material goods, serving as the driving force in connecting people with the forest, while non-material contributions are eroding due to complex socioeconomic changes. Major socioeconomic changes are also believed to drive the shift from dense forest to mixed forest and grassland. Discussion: In line with the state of the art, the knowledge and perception of changes documented in this article underline the quintessential need to include local communities' views in shaping forest management, in order to better finetune the strategies to safeguard biocultural diversity across forest areas.