Does Land Tenure Insecurity Affect Forest Cover Change? Evidence from Gerejeda State Forest in Ethiopia

Abstract

Literature shows that most evidences on the link between land tenure and land cover change come either from theoretical models or isolated tenure regimes. Specific to Ethiopia, the existing literature is limited to the investigation of these pertinent issues in isolation. This research aimed to investigate the effect of different tenure regimes on forest cover changes in Ethiopia. Three tenure regimes are experienced in Ethiopia from 1973 to 2015. Both social and spatio-temporal data analyses are carried out. The spatial results demonstrated that the forest cover has declined across time. This study reveals that tenure security is necessary to prevent mismanagement of forest cover, and its effect becomes more visible when it is integrated with measures that halt the direct and underlying drivers of forest cover change. Thus, tenure security should be considered as one important attribute in realizing sustainable forest management in particular and rural development in general.

Keywords

Land use/land cover forest cover change land tenure in security forest degradation

Introduction

This article tries to link forest tenure with forest cover change. Nowadays, concern on environmental sustainability is at the top of the global agenda and continues to be the focus of academic and policy inquiry. Forest is one of the main features of natural resources and the environment at large. Land use/land cover (LULC) change, where forest cover change is the main feature, is recognized as the main driving force of global environmental change and is thus central to the sustainable development debate (Lambin et al., 2000). Ahammad et al. (2019) briefly characterized the multitudinous outcomes of forest cover change on societal livelihoods and environmental sustainability. This suggests that forest cover change assessment across time is vital to improve understanding of the causes and consequences of recent global challenges. Furthermore, this also helps to assess the effectiveness of existing land use policies in order to tackle rapid and unplanned LULC changes (Kim et al., 2014).

Land tenure reform, where forest tenure is a subset, is the subject of heated public debate in many countries. Forest tenure represents the broad and complex relationship between people and forests. Contemporary literature on tenure security (see, e.g., Riggs et al., 2016) explains how the control of, use of and access to land resources, which include forest resources, are essential components of peoples’ livelihoods. Stable land tenure is critical to the sustainability of land use and the implementation of a national land resource management strategy (Lyu et al., 2019). In other words, land tenure systems have an important impact on dealing with the diverse and complex ways in which land and natural resources are utilized and managed. Furthermore, tenure security can also be considered as ‘the set of institutions and policies that determine locally how the land and its resources are accessed, who can hold and use these resources, for how long and under what conditions’ (Bruce et al., 2010). The prevalence of defined rights, responsibilities and restrictions, which are often referred to as tenure security, is believed to positively contribute to development and environmental sustainability. In other words, tenure security creates confidence and provides a guarantee for the resource holders to further invest on resources for their betterment in terms of livelihood and the environment (Ege, 2017). This indicates that land tenure determines access and use of land and resources by individuals or groups (FAO, 2002).

LULC changes are the result of people to land relationships. Lambin and Mayfroidt (2011) explained that population growth and poverty are frequently identified as the primary causes of LULC change. The same author further pointed out that people’s responses to economic challenges are the sole drivers of LULC changes. This implies that LULC transformation is the result of people’s relationship with land or land tenure and its institutional derivatives (see Dennis et al., 2005). It is also underlined in United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) (2012) that the major cause of change on planet Earth is our human activity. To be more specific, Dewan and Yamaguchi (2009) described that rapid changes in LULC and increased environmental degradation are directly caused by population pressure.

Tenure systems are characterized by the legal allocation of land uses and property rights. These are governed by policies and laws. In this regard, both the content as well as efficiency of implementation of policies and laws lead to a formally recognized tenure system where the rights, responsibilities and restrictions are well designated. In the context of forest resources, tenure security includes the rights of access to the forest and its resources and the responsibilities and restrictions to maintain the forest resources well protected.

The current loss and degradation of the natural environment and its visible impacts on climate change, food insecurity and global warming have drawn the attention of scholars and policymakers to explore the roles of land tenure regime in forest conservation and forest cover change. Contemporary studies in the Amazonian region (e.g., Paneque-Gálvez et al., 2013) pointed out that tenure insecurity plays an underlying role in the ongoing fragmentation and deterioration of the forest cover in the region. The study on forest cover change analysis has attracted international attention nowadays as it depicts its correlation with climate change and reducing rural poverty (Rudel, 2009). In this regard, establishing legally recognized people to land or people to forest relationships could contribute towards the realization of these and other global agendas such as REDD+ (Bonilla-Mohenoa et al., 2013). In line with this, Larson et al. (2013) justified that clear ownership and tenure security are pillars for successful REDD+ implementation.

Despite fragmented evidences on the link between tenure security and forest cover change, Bonilla-Mohenoa et al. (2013) revealed that there is a conceptual and empirical knowledge gap in linking the effect of property regimes with the use of natural resources and land conversion. Indeed, existing analyses are either limited to theoretical models or consider a single property regime or case. Recent literature on land governance acknowledges the significance of land tenure in land resource management and the need to link it with different attributes of land resources. For example, Lyu et al. (2019) tried to establish the relationship of land tenure with soil quality, and found out that there exist a causal relationship between them.

In Ethiopia, forest cover change is one of the problems that drastically altered the natural environment. Different literatures (c.f., Mekonnen & Bluffstone, 2007) associate these phenomena with improper use of the forested areas, especially by the landless or tenure insecure peasants for the purpose of sustaining their livelihoods. As argued earlier, there is an empirical and conceptual gap in understanding land tenure and its institutional arrangements with forest cover change. Until recently, the literature on forest cover change provided a partial understanding of the changes without taking into account the issue of tenure security. Such lack of an integrated analysis of remote sensing based forest cover change in combination with the modalities of people to land arrangement is argued here to be one cause for the deterioration of this pertinent resource from time to time.

To this end, this research aims to analyse the linkage between land tenure insecurity and the spatio-temporal forest cover change across different governing regimes in Ethiopia. First, the tenure regimes in Ethiopia are discussed. This is followed by a brief description of the case study area and methodology applied. Subsequently, the results and discussions are presented. Finally, based on key findings of the research, conclusions and potential recommendations are forwarded.

A Background of Land Tenure Regimes in Ethiopia

This section reviews the different land tenure regimes in Ethiopia and their implications for forest resources management. Three governing regimes are frequently referred in the literature to characterize land policy and land tenure in Ethiopia (Crewett et al., 2008). These include: the imperial regime (before 1974), the military regime (between 1974 and 1991) and the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) regime (post 1991).

According to Molla (1984), the land tenure system during the imperial regime was divided into two, namely the ancient (the communal) land tenure and the feudalism land tenure systems. During this regime, the land tenure system was described as one of the most complex and diverse. The forms and nature of tenures were so variable throughout the country. This was the deliberate characteristic of feudalism, with interests of creating favourable mechanisms to exercise the landlord and tenant system. During this regime, land and other natural resources such as the forest resources were concentrated in the hands of absentee landlords and the Ethiopian Orthodox church. Overall, the tenure rights of the tenants were highly insecure, arbitrary and characterized by frequent eviction of peasants.

Meanwhile, during the imperial regime, the first elaborated and modern legislation to manage forest resources was issued. According to Nune (2007), this and other consecutive laws recognized three types of forest resources: state, private and protected forests. The proclamation also stipulated that all forest on private or state land belonged to the government. Access and use of the state forest resources were made through loyalty payment, whereas owners of private forest would pay only land tax and provisions of fund for reforestation programmes which would later be reimbursed after reforestation. Despite this arrangement, the lack of regulated management practices and implementation capacity during the imperial regime was a bottleneck to the successful realization of the reforestation programme (Nune, 2007).

The military regime that came in power in 1974 introduced a new philosophy of land tenure arrangement which declared the nationalization of rural lands by its proclamation 31/1975 (TGE, 1975). The proclamation enforced the transfer of all rural lands to the state: only user rights were provided to the land tillers and these were effected via local peasants associations. In other words, transfer of rights such as sales, lease exchange, mortgage or inheritances was prohibited. However, the inabilities of peasant associations and other authorities in distributing the land rights weakened the successful establishment of user rights. The military regime also enacted the Forest and Wildlife Conservation and Protection Proclamation in 1980 (TGE, 1980) in a bid to enhance natural resources development. The proclamation recognized three types of forests: state ownership, ownership by peasant associations and ownership by urban dwellers. However, Admassie (1995) noted that the plantations that were planted following the afforestation and soil conservation programmes were destroyed in the early 1990s following the change of government in 1991.

The EPRDF regime took power in 1991 and pursued a free market ideology and a federal government system. Different scholars claim that this brought a little substantive change to the farmers’ landholding that led to the improvement of production. On the other hand, criticisms are also evident including restriction of land redistribution (Gebreselassie, 2006) and insufficient compensation payment for landholders expropriated from their holdings (Alemu, 2013). As a federal political structure, the Ethiopian Constitution under article 15(5) authorizes the federal government to enact national laws for the utilization and conservation of land and other resources including forest resources, whereas, article 52(2) provides the regional states to administer and manage land and other resources. Living in a clean and healthy environment is considered the right of all citizens as it is stated under article 44 that ‘all persons have the right to a clean and healthy environment’ (FDRE, 1985). In this regard, forests are the primary resources that are useful to achieve a clean and pollutant-free environment.

Under the EPRDF regime, Ethiopia also ratified and signed different international environmental conventions and treaties that have an impact on the efforts made towards increasing forest cover. These include: Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) (Mekonnen & Bluffstone, 2007; Nune, 2007). Despite the efforts made, practical works to improve forest cover have not been realized.

Generally, the concentration of land in the hands of a few landlords and the church during the imperial era, failure of the land reforms of the military regime to address forest development issues and institutional weakness during the EPRDF regime to enhance forest development in the country have accelerated the conversion of much of the natural forest cover for other land uses.

Materials and Methods

Study Site

Gerejeda state forest is found in Gidam district of Kellem Wollega zone, Oromia region, Ethiopia. It covers 300,164 ha. This particular study was carried out in Lalo Gare Kebele,¹

1
Kebele is the smallest political administrative unit in Ethiopia.

which is as an integral part of the state forest (Figure 1). Since its demarcation in 1983, the state forest is under the ownership of the Oromia National Regional State. The forest is currently under high encroachment by the surrounding people, and there are signs of deterioration here and there.

The total number of households in the case study locality is 366, of which about 231 households illegally plant coffee in the forest area and the remaining 135 households live in the neighbouring districts but come to the forested area to use it illegally. The livelihood of the case study population is based on a mixed farming system where crop cultivation and animal husbandry are practised in the same land management unit. Regarding land rights, all plots of the land are not registered; very few households are provided with landholding certificates. This proves that tenure insecurity is continuing as a major challenge for the landholders.

Figure 1.

Source: The authors.

Methods

This research applied a mixed research approach comprising social and spatial methods for both data collection and analysis. This method can be referred to as a socio-spatial approach. Most research in the last decades primarily focussed on treating the different dimensions of space and its associated attributes in separate ways. However, due to the complexities associated with the ever-increasing people to land relationships, there has been an increasing interest to understand the social dimension in combination with the spatial or technical dimensions. This approach is argued as important, especially to draw an all-rounded synthesis of contemporary global challenges that include climate change analysis (Christmann & Ibert, 2012), land policy and governance analysis (Alemie et al., 2015), environmental analysis (Raven et al., 2012) and urbanization (Yao and Zhang, 2014). Furthermore, the significance of the socio-spatial approach in understanding the dynamics of people to land relationships is well explained in Alemie et al. (2015). Likewise, Ahammad et al. (2019) also assessed forest cover change and its impact on livelihood in eastern upland regions of Bangladesh and found out that livelihood outcomes are highly linked with the changes and conditions of forest cover. These imply that the socio-spatial approach is vital to draw an encompassing knowledge of people to land relationship together.

Data Collection

Literally, land tenure reflects a social phenomenon that can affect forest resources in terms of the status of their coverage, environmental management and benefits for livelihood. The policies and legal aspects of land tenure are directly applied on the spatial dimension and the outputs of these are spatially manifested. This implies that the impacts of land tenure on land resources such as forests can easily be captured in the spatial output. For example, poor forest management as a result of forest tenure insecurity can be easily mapped.

This research uses two data types. These include social and spatial data. Primary data on socio-economic and land tenure issues are captured using different research tools including questionnaires addressed to households, open-ended interviews with key informants and government staff and focus group discussions (FGDs). Here, respondents of the questionnaires are selected randomly and FGDs were purposefully selected considering a cross-section of the community including women. Moreover, efforts were also made to involve elderly people to fill the shortage of data especially during the imperial and military regimes. Secondary social data were collected from relevant literature and government reports.

This study used spatial data taken during three epochs including 1973, 1991 and 2015, representing the three important land tenure regimes in Ethiopia, that is, the imperial, military and current governing regimes, respectively. A time series of satellite images of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) of the years 1973, 1991 and 2015 were downloaded from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) online database. A total of 200 Global Positioning System (GPS) readings were collected at well-identifiable natural and manmade artefacts both on the image and on the ground. These points were used to correct the image geometrically, for training data sets for image classification and to validate the classification results. A supervised classification was used to analyse the spatial extent of forest cover changes across time.

On the other hand, as discussed earlier, the socio-economic data were collected through questionnaires, interviews and FGDs. A total of 175 questionnaires were used, of which 100 questionnaires were given to the households living within Gerejeda state forest and 75 to the people living outside Gerejeda state forest but using the forest resources for different purposes in their livelihood. A total of 11 interviews, with experts and heads working in land administration and forest-related positions at the district, zonal and regional levels, were conducted. Likewise, two FGDs were held, each composed of eight household heads (six male and two female), living within or outside the forest boundary.

Data Analysis

The LULC change or forest cover change was assessed through the application of remote sensing analysis techniques. To derive the spatial output, the following steps were used: land cover classes were identified following an intensive field survey, training data sets were selected from each land cover class, supervised image classification was performed for the three epoch images and accuracy assessment was performed to measure the quality of the classification results. On the other hand, the underlying drivers such as land tenure and institutional aspects were assessed through social data analysis techniques. Particularly, a triangulation data analysis technique that involved examining data from interviews, FGDs and other sources was used. This particular research method helps to gain multiple perspectives and validation of data (DeJong & Schellens, 1998) and derive common and valuable socio-economic information regarding the link between land tenure and forest cover change. According to Patton (1999), triangulation helps avoid the problem of relying too much on any single data source. The results are used to discuss and explain the spatial results on changes on the forest cover experienced over the three governing regimes. The overall methodology design is presented in Figure 2.

Results and Discussion

This section is subdivided into results and discussion sub-sections. The results sub-section provides a concise and precise description of the spatial and social analysis (causes of the socio-spatial forest cover change) results, whereas, the discussion sub-section provides the interpretation of the results and their alignment with those of previous scientific works.

Results

Spatio-temporal Analyses of Forest Cover Change

The spatio-temporal analysis results in Figures 4 –6 depict that there is a decline of the spatial coverage of the forest in the study area from 1973 to 2015. In 1973, which is during the imperial regime, about 36.79 per cent or 4880.3 ha of the study area were covered by forests. Meanwhile, a declining trend is observed between 1991 and 2015 where the forest coverage significantly reduced from 32.78 per cent or 4349.5 ha to 30.22 per cent or 4009.9 ha. Overall, a total decrease of 6.56 per cent or 870.4 ha is observed from 1973 to 2015. Between 1973 and 2015, the forested land was transformed into cropland, coffee plantation, settlement, shrub and grassland covers (see Figures 3 –5).

Generally, accuracy assessment determines the quality of the map created from remotely sensed data (Congalton & Creen, 2009). In order to assess the accuracy of land cover maps extracted from Landsat data of 2015, a total of 75 ground truth points were selected from all the land use classes used for the classification. Accuracy assessment of the LULC maps was then performed using field data and the geographical features on land use maps, and the results were recorded in a confusion matrix. A non-parametric Kappa test was also used to measure the classification accuracy as it accounts for all the elements in the confusion matrix rather than just the diagonal elements (Congalton & Creen, 2009). The total accuracy of the Landsat-derived LULC data was 86.6, with corresponding Kappa statistics of 0.83 for Landsat TM 2015. This result agrees with the standard accuracy of 85–90% for LULC mapping studies as recommended by Anderson et al. (1976).

Figure 2.

Source: The authors.

Figure 3.

Source: The authors.

Figure 4.

Source: The authors.

Figure 5.

Source: The authors.

Causes of the Socio-spatial Forest Cover Change

The socio-economic factors of forest cover change are classified as underlying and direct causes of the forest cover change in the study area (Table 1). The same approach is applied in Dennis et al. (2005). In this research, direct causes refer to specific events (e.g., high need of land for various purposes) that motivate people to take immediate and practical actions at a local level (e.g., encroaching into forested area and take land illegally), whereas, underlying causes are distant or indirect causes for people to take actions that include legal, policy and actors’ performance.

Discussion

Different land cover categories, namely forest, shrub, grassland, cropland, bare land and settlement, were prevalent in the study area. Evaluation of the spatial and temporal changes of the forest cover using Landsat images shows that the forest cover extent in particular seems to have increased over the past 40 years (see Figures 3, 4, and 5), though the ground reality is the opposite. This is because coffee plantation, which is a dominant cash crop in the study area, is expanding from time to time on the cropland itself and on the forestland, grassland and shrub land through encroachment over the study period. However, because of similarities of electromagnetic responses of coffee plantation with forest features, the remote sensing technique lacks the ability to discriminate the coffee plantation from the forestland. This is attributed due to the poor spatial resolution of the Landsat images. Thus, the observed forest cover classification in the 1991 and 2015 classified results is the combination of coffee plantation, which is a cash crop, and the existing forest covers.

Table 1.

Major Causes of Forest Cover Change in Gerejeda State Forest

	Responses (%); N = 175
Direct causes
Settlement expansion	80.4
Agricultural land expansion	97.3
Fuel wood and construction purpose	85.3
Indirect causes
Lack of access to land	88
Poorly defined tenure security	59
State ownership of the forest	83
Lack of incentive	60
Lack of demarcation	72
Lack of community participation	84

Source: Authors result.

According to the responses from the FGD, however, the forest cover has undergone a dramatic reduction over the study period (see the discussions under the section Direct Causes) due to its conversion to cropland, coffee plantation and resettlement. For this change to happen, there are a number of driving causes. As described in Table 1, these causes are categorized as direct and underlying causes and are now discussed below.

Direct Causes

The underlying causes discussed earlier have the potential to push people to take action in securing land in the forest area. The major direct causes for the forest degradation in the case study area are discussed next.

1. Agricultural Expansion

Agriculture is the dominant economic sector in the study area. Different researchers such as Verburg et al. (1999) revealed that agricultural expansion is a major contributor of deforestation. Agricultural expansion is directly related to population increase. Where there is population pressure there is a need for more crop land, grazing land and forest resource consumption for diverse purposes. As indicated in Table 1, about 97.3 per cent of the respondents reported that there is an observed agricultural land expansion; especially, the expansion of the coffee plantation in the encroached forest has contributed the major land use change (see Figure 6). This is also shown in the spatial analysis, that is, cropland has expanded by 9.2 per cent from 1973 to 1991, and from 1991 to 2015 by 3.6 per cent. In addition, according to the information obtained from the forest enterprise chairperson and direct field observation, coffee is the famous cash crop in the study area, covering more than 2195.2 ha or 80 per cent of the forestland that is encroached and cleared for agricultural purpose. In other words, apart from the forestland conversion to cropland, resettlement and the utilization of the forest for logging and fuel wood (Figure 6), nearly 1800 ha of forestland were transformed into coffee plantation in 2015. These together could show how the forestland is threatened during the different governing regimes.

2. Settlement Expansion

Settlement expansion is one of the major contributors of forest degradation in the study area, and this was recognized by about 80 per cent of the respondents. People migrate to the forest area in search of land for farming and settlement. The reasons for this include small landholding size, lack of tenure security and the desire to extract forest products. The spatial analysis results also revealed settlement as a contributing factor to forest cover change. In the study area, the settlement increased in 1973–1991 by 1.4% and in 1991–2015 by 4.6%. According to the information from the FGD and key informant interviews, most of the time, people from neighbouring districts and other distant parts of the country are tempted to encroach on the forest land. In addition, the seasonal job opportunity created in the study area, especially coffee harvesting, gave the daily labourers a chance to stay in the area for a relatively long period of time, and this in turn created conducive conditions to form their family and encroach on the forest land.

Figure 6:

Source: Photo credit to Mr. Melkamu.

3. Rising Demand for Fuel Wood and Construction Material

As it is evident elsewhere in Ethiopia, in the study area, forest products are largely used for domestic purposes including fuel and construction purposes. In Ethiopia, forest products are the most important sources of domestic energy: fuel wood contributes about 85 per cent of the energy source (EFAP, 1994). About 85 per cent of the respondents disclosed that woodcutting for fuel and construction purpose in the study area has substantially contributed to the deforestation of the study area. In the group discussion, it was mentioned that farmers close to the forest and even those in distant villages collect fuel wood, farm implements and construction materials from the Gerejeda state forest. This impact would have been reduced if the people around the study area and away from the forest had grown their own trees and if community-based forest management principles and practices were put in place.

Underlying Causes

This research has identified different underlying causes as shown in Table 1 and as discussed below.

1. Lack of Access to Land

This research revealed that about 88 per cent of the respondents agreed that lack of access to land was one indirect cause for forest depletion under the three regimes. In Ethiopia, before 1975, much of the land was the property of few landlords. Respondents in the group discussions, of which about 60 per cent were elderly,² reported that they were tenants to the landlords. During this period tenants were denied of land use or ownership rights until the 1975 rural land reform that gave them possession that is limited only to use right on the land. Referring to the military regime, 80 per cent of the respondents reported that they had access to land possession. Under the EPRDF regime, on the other hand, 80 per cent of the respondents agreed that they have access to fragmented pieces of lands. The survey on landholding per household showed that about 50 per cent of the respondents have less than 2 ha and 32 per cent of the respondents have 0.5 ha. The low per capita landholding size was attributed to the increase in population pressure. According to the FGD respondents, a few youths held 0.5 ha of farmland whereas the majority was landless. To sustain livelihood and other societal needs, farmers who held less than 2 ha involve themselves in encroaching activity predominantly on the forestland. The reason for this is partly associated to the absence of formal land redistribution in response to the rising rural population. Only less than half (45%) of the respondents reported that they grew trees on their landholdings. This was mainly attributed as it was discussed during the FGD is due to land tenure insecurity.

2. Poorly Defined Tenure Security

Campbell et al. (2003) revealed that farmers’ decisions on land management is influenced by land tenure security. Obviously, the uncertainty of land security leads to cultivation of land for short-term needs rather than for long-term benefits. Specific to this study, 59 per cent of the respondents reported that they did not have confidence on their landholdings to develop and invest on their land for the future, mainly due to two major reasons: (a) the land ownership is vested to the government—they feared that their land could be expropriated any time when the government have some interest on the land; and (b) there are many landless people in the study area—if the government launched a land reform program, they suspected that their land would be taken. This study also revealed only 13 per cent of the respondents have land tenure security, and these respondents are those landholders whose land is registered by their name and who have the expectation of receiving the rural land certification. According to the land administration experts in the case study area, however, the land registration and certification process is slow as many farmers are living within the forest boundary. The prevailing landholding problems need to be scrutinized before the landholding certificates are issued as per the rules and regulations stipulated in the rural land law. In addition, the land registration process is experiencing capacity problems, especially in the technical areas of measurement, demarcation and mapping of land units. As a result, the expected role of land registration and certification on improving tenure security, encouragement of rural investment and improvements in land productivity are not profoundly observed.

This study is in line with the work of Alix-Garcia et al. (2016) who concluded that forest tenure insecurity is described as one of the driving factors for forest cover change in Eastern Europe and European Russia. Studies in different countries also show that the lack of a strong institutional setup for tenure reform and policy implementation mechanisms, which can be perceived as a sign of weak governance, was the major underlying cause of forest deterioration and transformation into other land cover classes (Lerman et al., 2004; Stickler et al., 2017; Zeleke, 2000).

3. State Ownership of the Forest

As discussed earlier, the forest ownerships across the three tenure regimes are different. Specific to the case study area, 82.7 per cent of the respondents support private ownership of the forest, whereas, 13.2 per cent prefer state ownership and only 4 per cent support public/community ownership. Regarding forest protection practices across the different regimes, about 97 per cent of the elderly respondents reported that forest protection was strong during the imperial era and 69 per cent of the respondents agreed that forest protection is low during the EPRDF regime (Table 1). According to the FGD participants, protection of the forest resources during the imperial period was better due to the fact that there was a strong institutional setup established by the feudal lords coupled with the existence of strong social norms in protecting forest resources. Meanwhile, this study portrays that during the military regime there was too much encroachment of the forest area by the local community, and this was further aggravated immediately following the downfall of the military regime in 1991 due to the political instability. As a consequence, a large tract of forest land was cleared for settlement, cultivation and grazing. According to the information from the Forest and Wildlife Enterprise, during the EPRDF regime, about 2195.2 ha of forest land were converted into a coffee plantation and a significant portion of the forest was cleared for different purposes. A study across post-socialist countries revealed the influences of land ownership and other institutional drivers as key underlying causes for forest cover change (Kuemmerle et al., 2008). Specific to the type of land ownership, Robinson et al. (2014) explained that public or state land ownership is associated with negative forest outcomes as compared with other forms of land ownership. The spatial extent of the forest cover change during the three regimes is presented in the result section.

4. Lack of Incentives

The socio-economic data analysis showed that about 60 per cent of the respondents feel that lack of incentives is one underlying cause for forest depletion in the study area. Respondents further explained that during the imperial regime, although tree-cutting was prohibited, farmers were allowed to collect dry and dead wood for fuel. Especially in times of fire hazards in houses, victims were allowed to get wood for construction without payment. During the military regime, since the forest was designated as a state forest, the local community was in theory blocked from accessing the forest. Forest guards employed by the government, together with the local militia men, were in charge of protecting the forest. However, this arrangement could not prevent people from encroaching on the forest. During the transitional period of EPRDF, the forest was almost open access and a large tract of forest land was encroached for farming and settlement purposes. There was a lack of institutional arrangement to protect the forest resource. The general scenario indicates that the lack of incentives for the community is one of the institutional factors exposing the forest to degradation. Currently, however, there are initiatives that are focusing on participatory forest management. In this case, user groups are formed and benefit-sharing arrangements are designed jointly by the state and the community. This arrangement, according to respondents, may promote sustainable forest management.

5. Lack of Demarcation

Demarcation is important to protect the forest resources. Specific to the case study area, 72 per cent of the respondents claimed that lack of proper demarcation that could separate the forest area from the settlements and farmlands has remained as one potential underlying cause for the degradation of the forest. This was confirmed during the field observation. Overall, the lack of a clearly demarcated boundary in the study area allows the community members to freely expand their farming land, land for grazing and land for collecting fuel wood. Consequently, this exposed the forest to land cover change.

6. Lack of Community Participation

Forest resources cannot be well protected by government agencies alone. Hence, local community participation in the conservation and management of the forest resource is essential. However, in the socio-economic data analysis, about 84 per cent of the respondents revealed that there is no community participation in forest conservation and management activities. Failure to create a sense of ownership was manifested by a very high extraction of forest products and encroachment for settlement, cultivation and grazing, leading to the event of the tragedy of the commons, particularly during the military regime and in the early days of the EPRDF. To avoid further degradation of the forest and to sustain its economic and ecological productivity, the participatory forest management initiative already started should be complemented by the strengthening of the local institution and a strong awareness creation campaign at the community level.

According to the socio-economic data analysis, most of the farmers were involved in illegal settlement, crop production, coffee-planting and extraction and selling of wood for fuel and construction purposes. These were common practices that supplemented their insufficient income from agricultural outputs. Meanwhile, from the map in Figure 5, it is observed that the forestland cover has shown an increment in 2015. This is due to the increase in the coffee plantation cover replacing areas previously occupied by shrubs and trees.

In general, from the socio-economic data, it was clear that there was no coffee plantation during the imperial and military regime. However, during the EPRDF regime, the forest cover of about 2195 ha was transformed into coffee plantation cover, though the spatial analysis results failed to discriminate the coffee plantation from the natural forest on the map in Figure 5. This has led to a total decline of the forest land by 3065 ha between 1973 and 2015.

Conclusions

The findings in this research revealed that different factors are responsible for forest cover change in the study area. The underlying causes include tenure insecurity, lack of community participation, lack of incentives from the forest, state ownership of the forest in the study area, lack of institutional building at the local level and absence of land certification. On the other hand, the direct causes for forest degradation were associated with agricultural expansion mainly for coffee plantation, settlement expansion and extraction of forest products for construction materials and fuel wood purposes. Here, one can conclude that tenure insecurity is necessary to prevent mismanagement of forest cover, and its effect becomes more visible when it is integrated with measures that halt the direct and underlying drivers of forest cover change. In other words, it is difficult to disentangle tenure from other direct and indirect drivers of forest cover change.

From the results it can be asserted that the socio-spatial methodology used to generate data on land cover change provides opportunities to compare perceptions of households on the effect of land tenure against the forest cover changes using remote-sensing technologies. To be more specific, the ‘where’ question addressed in the spatial analysis clearly portrays the spatial extent of the forest cover in the different epochs, and this is further consolidated by the socio-economic data. Linking the spatial analysis results with socio-economic data provides empirical answers to questions about ‘how’ and ‘why’ tenure security influences the forest cover change in a temporal dimension. Furthermore, detailed analysis of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions has led to scrutinizing direct and underlying causes responsible for the observed forest changes. The socio-spatial methodology also appeared to have the potential to drive an understanding of temporal trends in forest cover change (in this case between 1972 and 2015). Attempts to explain land use and cover changes solely by using the socio-economic analysis or by trying to scrutinize the direct and underlying causes from the spatial analysis alone are unlikely to produce reliable information that would be useful to make plausible arguments on land management interventions.

Both the socio-economic and spatio-temporal results presented in this research show a continuous decline in the forest resource. To sustain the productivity of the forest and make effective use of the multiple associated benefits of forest resources, it is recommended that the boundaries of the forest must be demarcated with full participation of the local community, landholding certificates must be given to the rightful users, a participatory forest management plan that addresses the needs of the community must be prepared, and the cases of households settled within the forest should be handled in such a way that their livelihood is not disturbed and the health of the forest is not impaired. In sum, analysis of spatial data in conjunction with socio-economic variables produces viable outputs that could be taken up by practitioners and policymakers to initiate sustainable natural resources management. To this effect, there is a dire need to establish and strengthen a land administration and governance institution that could cater to the interests of the local community and the government.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

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Does Land Tenure Insecurity Affect Forest Cover Change? Evidence from Gerejeda State Forest in Ethiopia

Abstract

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

A Background of Land Tenure Regimes in Ethiopia

Materials and Methods

Study Site

1 Kebele is the smallest political administrative unit in Ethiopia.

Methods

Data Collection

Data Analysis

Results and Discussion

Results

Spatio-temporal Analyses of Forest Cover Change

Causes of the Socio-spatial Forest Cover Change

Discussion

Major Causes of Forest Cover Change in Gerejeda State Forest

Direct Causes

2. Settlement Expansion

Underlying Causes

1. Lack of Access to Land

2. Poorly Defined Tenure Security

3. State Ownership of the Forest

4. Lack of Incentives

5. Lack of Demarcation

6. Lack of Community Participation

Conclusions

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

References

1
Kebele is the smallest political administrative unit in Ethiopia.