Development and evaluation of local communities incentive programs for improving the traditional forest management: A case study of Northern Zagros forests,Iran

We examined the local community incentive programs to improve traditional forest management in three forested villages in Baneh city, Kurdistan province in the northern Zagros forests of western Iran. Zagros forests cover 6.07 million ha and support rich plant and animal diversity. Changes in local community social and economic systems and the inefficiency of traditional forest management led to a critical situation in the stability of forest regeneration in recent decades. Due to a shortage of productive and arable lands and resulting unemployment and poverty, people overexploited the Zagros forests. Outside intervention in traditional forest management creates conflicts between local peoples and forest management organizations. To achieve sustainable forest management, including forest resources conservation and improvement of natural resource based livelihoods of communities, it is desirable to implement Forestry Incentive Programs (FIP) based on the important functions of forests. Detailed information on the socio-economics of communities, the effect of forests on local livelihoods, and lists of products extracted from the forest were obtained from a survey of local communities though questionnaire, interview and observation. We studied 276 households in three villages and completed 76 questionnaires by householders in the quantitative analysis. Sampling was performed by simple random sampling (SRS). The needs of rural communities, such as livestock husbandry, mainly arise from the characteristics and environmental features of villages. We identified the driving forces, pressures, status, impacts and responses (DPSIR) to design incentive programs, by DPSIR analysis and interaction analysis. Evaluation of local community benefits from forests showed that in order to improve forest management, 319 dollars per year would be needed by each family as an incentive in 2010 to prevent lopping and firewood collecting, the main causes of forest degradation.