Collective Forest Management in Ethiopia: Challenges and Failures

Collective Action for Forest Management, Challenges and Failures: Review Paper from Ethiopia in Particular
AJAERD
Collective Action for Forest Management, Challenges
and Failures: Review Paper from Ethiopia in Particular
Bekele Wegi1* and Obsinet Eshetu2
1Lecturer and PhD student, Department of Agricultural Economics, Haramaya University, Ethiopia.
2MSc student, Collaborative Master of Agricultural and Applied Economics (CMAAE), Haramaya University, Ethiopia
Global natural resource depletion is among the most challenging problems faced by human
beings. Its severity is very high in sub-Saharan African countries including Ethiopia. The purpose
of this paper was to review the role of collective action for forest management, challenges and
failures in Ethiopia. National level environmental conservation and rehabilitation efforts have
been established and implemented with particular focus on the fast deteriorating highland areas
for a long time. However, state-based forest resource management approach could not bring the
desired results and failed to conserve forest resource degradation in Ethiopia. It has been argued
that state-based forest resource management is failed due to different reasons including lack of
local people’s participation, state organs do not access remote areas where there is no good road
infrastructures, rent seeking and corruption by state officials at different levels. Collective action
primarily focused on forest resource management have recently introduced, and implemented in
the form of participatory forest management for the last two decades. Nevertheless, the success
of collective forest management is also affected by different factors and being faced several
challenges in achieving sustainable forest management.
Keywords: Natural resources, Forest, Collective action, Ethiopia
INTRODUCTION
Background
Globally, natural resources including forests and trees are
vital and the only sources of income, livelihoods and well-
being for rural populations, particularly indigenous people,
smallholders, those living in close proximity to forests, and
those who make use of trees outside forests (FAO, 2018).
Forests and trees are also important livelihood
components for many, including the estimated 2.5 billion
people involved in smallholder agriculture (IFAD1, 2013),
most of whom benefit from the regulatory and provisioning
ecosystem services2 of forests and trees.
In all countries in the world, natural resource depletion is
among the most challenging problems faced by human
beings. However, there are significant differences in the
abilities of countries to cope with the problem of sustained
1
IFAD represents The International Fund for Agricultural Development.
2
“Ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems.
These include provisioning services such as food and water; regulating
services such as flood and disease control; cultural services such as
use of natural resources (Hurni, 1997). Preventing and
reversing land degradation is crucial for achieving food,
water and energy security, as well as for mitigating climate
change and reversing biodiversity loss (Godfray et al.,
2010; Bouma, 2014). In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), land
degradation is very common and widespread, resulting in
serious negative ecological, social and economic
consequences, particularly in smallholder farming systems
whose livelihoods is almost totally dependent on land and
land resources such as forests.
*Corresponding Author: Bekele Wegi, Lecturer and PhD
student, Department of Agricultural Economics, Haramaya
University, Ethiopia. E-mail: bekeleewegi@gmail.com
spiritual, recreational, and cultural benefits; and supporting services such
as nutrient cycling, which maintains conditions” (Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment, 2005).
Review Article
Vol. 5(3), pp. 640-647, December, 2019. © www.premierpublishers.org, ISSN: 2167-0477
Journal of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development

Wegi and Eshetu 641
Like other countries, the forest resources in Ethiopia have
been continuously degraded over time (Tesfaye, 2011;
Tesfaye et al., 2012; Ameha et al., 2014; Solomon et al.,
2017). They pointed that this continuous and rapid
deterioration of the natural resource base has become a
serious threat to both ecosystem functions and economic
production in Ethiopia. Biophysical, environmental and
economic indicators provide strong evidence of a severe
deterioration in the state of natural resources in Ethiopia
(FAO, 1986; Hurni, 1988; Campbell, 1991; Sutcliffe, 1993;
Hoben, 1995; Bojo and Cassels, 1995; Nyssen et al.,
2004).
Several previous empirical studies suggested different
alternative ways of managing common resources (for
example forests). These include state, collective and
private management to control or reduce resource
degradation. However, there is continuous debate on the
effectiveness and the success of the various methods in
improving use benefits as well as reducing degradation
(Wade, 1986; Pearce and Turner, 1990; McCarthy et al.,
2001).
The importance of collective (community) action3 has been
highly recognized as a viable and promising method of
managing natural resources (Gebremedhin et al., 2000;
McCarthy et al., 2001). They argue that for successful
community natural resource management, it is necessary
that management and use rights should be vested in the
community. On top of these, the community must establish
use regulations and enforce those regulations.
In Ethiopia, in the past, forests were managed by the
government without the participation of local communities
(Tesfaye, 2011; Tesfaye et al., 2012; Ameha et al., 2014;
Solomon et al., 2017). However, local communities are
often rich in indigenous knowledge and appreciation of
their natural and cultural heritages. To overcome the
prevailing and pressing problems or at least to minimize
the magnitude of the deriving factors, the development
actors, mainly, non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
have introduced the concept of participatory forest
management (PFM) in some parts of Ethiopia (Temesgen
et al., 2007).
It is believed that the sustainable management of natural
resources requires the participation of local communities
(Mekuria et al. 2015). Such participation harmonizes
livelihoods with management, enhances benefits, and
guarantees sustainable management interventions (Reed
and Massie, 2013).
In Ethiopia, there are wide studies conducted on forest
management in general and focused on community-based
forest resource management (collective action towards
forest management) in particular. Recent studies are also
3
Collective action can be defined as ‘a coordinated behavior of groups
toward a common interest or purpose’ (Vermillion, 1999: 184).
very much focused on the comparison of different
alternative forest managements to achieve sustainability
(Wondimagegnehu and Fekadu, 2012; Yami et al., 2013;
Siraj et al., 2015).
Although the findings of previous studies indicated
different alternatives being applied to forest management,
challenges facing each alternatives and comparison
between different alternatives of forest management, their
practical applicability at the national level is limited due to
heterogeneity of results. This calls for study that aggregate
the findings of different studies conducted in different parts
of the country. There is a scanty of attempts made on
reviewing the contribution of collective resource
management, challenges and failures at the country level.
However, availability of reviewed paper at the country level
is very important. It could be vital for government, other
stakeholders and NGOs aimed at sustainable forest
management to design and implement their policy or
interventions. Hence, the rationale behind this review is to
bridge the knowledge gap exist on this regards. Therefore,
this review is relevant, and will add summarized results to
the existing literature on collective natural resource
management in general and forest management in
particular.
Objectives of the Paper
The objective of this paper is to look at the contributions of
collective action in enhancing forest management,
challenges, failures and lessons from collective forest
management in Ethiopia.
More specifically:
1. To review the trends of natural resource degradation
and management in Ethiopia,
2. To review the role of collective forest management
towards achieving the sustainable forest management
and
3. To review the challenges impeding collective forest
management in Ethiopia.
Limitations of the Paper
This paper is prepared based on the findings of related
literature on the topic. It is limited to only secondary data
collected from different sources such as central statistics
agency of Ethiopia, published articles, and books. The
paper focused on the contributions of collective forest
management to control or reduce forest degradation,
challenges of collective forest management and, failures
of the state forest management in Ethiopia.
Organization of the Paper
The remainder of this paper is organized as follow: In
section two, materials and methods (how relevant

J. Agric. Econ. Rural Devel. 642
literatures were searched) is presented. The main body of
this paper is presented in section three. It provides the
trends of natural resource degradation and management,
collective forest management as policy to replace
centralized forest management policy, challenges and
failures of collective forest management on the ground and
case studies conducted in Ethiopia as a complement to the
vast body of literature. The last section concludes the
paper.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
To prepare this paper and achieve its objectives, empirical
evidences, reports of governments and NGOs on natural
resource management, collective forest management and
other important publications (articles) were searched
through keyword searches in relevant literature data banks
and downloaded. Literature were searched in the Google,
Google Scholar, Research gate, and Haramaya University
library search. Following these procedures, many articles
and documents written in English language were obtained.
Most of the publications are articles in academic journals.
Book chapters and grey literature such as conference
papers, working papers, and reports in institutional series
were also obtained. Articles published in academic
journals are usually believed to pass through a rigorous
peer-review process. Most papers presented at academic
conferences have also passed a peer-review process,
which is often less strict than that of good journals though.
Some of the other publications are peer reviewed, and few
are not. Some of the working papers and reports are
published by research institutes or government
organizations while others are NGO publications. In this
paper, the samples were not limited to peer reviewed
studies.
Finally, attempts were made to show the trends of natural
resource (forest) degradation in Ethiopia. How forest
resource had been managed and recent policy reforms to
minimize forest loss in Ethiopia are also explored. In
addition, how collective forest management had been
introduced as a policy option to conserve natural resource
degradation is highlighted. Furthermore, the challenges
collective forest management is being faced practically on
the ground in Ethiopia is presented. Lastly, attempts were
made to critically review and present two case studies
conducted in Ethiopia.
DISCUSSIONS AND INSIGHTS
Overview of Natural Resource Degradation and
Management in Ethiopia
Several studies argue that increasing deterioration of the
natural resource base has become a serious threat to both
ecosystem functions and economic production in Ethiopia
(FAO, 1986; Hurni, 1988; Campbell, 1991; Sutcliffe, 1993;
Hoben, 1995; Bojo and Cassels, 1995; Nyssen et al.,
2004). They added that biophysical, environmental and
economic indicators provide strong evidence of a severe
deterioration in the state of natural resources in Ethiopia.
Although availability of reliable information on the extent of
the past deforestation is limited, historical sources
indicated that about 42 million hectare or close to 35
percent of Ethiopia’s total land area was covered with
forests (Ensermu et al., 2000). They added that in the early
1950; about 19 million hectare or 15 percent of forest had
only remained and about 85 percent of forest had
degraded. Recently, of the total land area, only four
percent is covered with forests with an estimated
deforestation rate of 140,000 hectare per year (Million,
2011). He further pointed that such dramatic decline in
forest is mainly associated with human influences. He
highlighted that forest cover change have been induced by
factors such as traditional agricultural production system,
improper grazing system, illegal logging and wild fire,
among other factors.
To reduce these problems, national level environmental
conservation and rehabilitation efforts were started in the
1970s, with particular focus on the fast deteriorating
highland areas (Bedru et al., 2010). They pointed that one
of the major conservation policy measures in the degraded
highland areas of Ethiopia was to close degraded
community woodlands from human and livestock
intervention to promote natural regeneration of forests.
Moreover, as the introduction of this measure limits local
harvesting of forest products, many local users view such
a land use change negatively. Such non-participatory
approaches failed to reduce tree felling and clearing,
especially in protected national forest priority areas due to
local community’s pressure on the forest (FARM Africa,
2000). On top of this, this problem was beyond the control
of the state, and initiated alternative forest resource
management. It has been argued that the solution for this
severe problem would be encouraging of local people to
manage and conserve their resources since they live with
forests, they are primary users of forest products and have
better knowledge about their surrounding than
governments structures or organs (FAO, 2018).
Collective Forest Management as a Policy Option
Past studies indicated that governing common pool
resources such as forests is difficult because such
resources combine the most problematic aspects of
resource governance, namely subtractability and
excludability (Andersson and Ostrom, 2008). They further
argued that these resources are used by multiple
individuals while generating finite quantities of resource
units, where one person’s use subtracts from the quantity
of resource units available to others. Moreover, most
common-pool resources are sufficiently large that multiple
actors can simultaneously use the resource system, and
excluding potential beneficiaries is very costly (Basurto
and Ostrom, 2009).

Wegi and Eshetu 643
In Ethiopia, state efforts to exert ownership over forests,
coupled with the lack of capacity to enforce regulations, or
actually to control access to forests, produced institutional
uncertainty and led to general patterns of forest
degradation and deforestation (Mekonnen and Bluffstone,
2015). Over the last decades, Ethiopian governments
have attempted to offset this degradation trend with large-
scale reforestation and plantation policies but with limited
success (Hoben 1995).
Recent studies confirmed that Ethiopian natural resource
authorities, donors and NGOs have realized that
centralized expert-led forest management efforts had been
unsuccessful and local communities that held major stakes
in forest resources would be interested in investing in
sustainable forest management (Temesgen et al., 2007
cited by Ameha et al., 2014). Practically, on the ground,
government initiated program called Participatory Forest
Management (PFM)4 showed positive results on
restoration of forests (Siraj et al., 2015). An important
component of this program has been the recognition of
rights of local community groups to manage and protect
forest resources. Moreover, the collection of rights and
obligations devolved to these groups provided positive
incentives to collectively maintain and restore forest
resources they live in or around their farms. Other past
studies also argued that the basic premise of PFM is that
sustainable forest management is most likely to occur
when local communities manage local forests and when
they get access to direct benefits from participating in
forest management (Ostrom, 1990; Agrawal and Ostrom,
2001).
To this end, collective participation in managing
government owned forests has become a central concern
for policy makers, researchers and academicians to
enhance sustainable forest management in developing
countries (Chirenje et al., 2013). This has shifted the
emphasis from central decision-making (top-down
approach) to local decision-making (bottom-up approach),
in which local communities are expected to participate in
conserving and managing community forests (Islam et al.,
2015). This policy shift has been necessitated from the
recognition of the failure of top-down state forest policies
to ensure sustainable management and equitable access
to forest resources (Tesfaye et al., 2012).
Collective action has a long history in Ethiopia. Traditional
forms of collective action such as ekub, a traditional form
of rotating savings and credit association; work groups
such as wonfel, and debo, which help in mobilizing labor
resource; and idir, a traditional association which provides
insurance for members during death and other accidents
are only few that have been operating in Ethiopia (Degnet
and Mekbib, 2013). These informal associations are still
important in the country. However, it was in the 1950s that
4
In this paper, participatory forest management and collective forest
management are used interchangeably.
formal cooperatives were established (Couture et al.,
2002; Kodama, 2007).
Nevertheless, collective action primarily focused on
natural resource management in general and forest
resource management in particular have recently
introduced, and implemented in the form of participatory
forest management since 1990s (Ameha et al., 2014).
Since then, several studies confirmed that community
based management of natural resources (such as
fisheries, forests, rangelands, etc) have been increasingly
implemented and indicated positive results in Ethiopia
(Wondimagegnehu and Fekadu, 2012; Girma and Zegeye,
2017; Solomon et al., 2017). They witnessed that
collective forest management have increased the
livelihood, the natural resource base and the social assets
of the local communities. On top of these, collective forest
management strategy could attain the sustainability of the
forest and accelerate the standard of household’s
livelihood. As a result, this bottom-up approach has been
widely accepted by local communities living near or in the
forest. For example, a study conducted by Girma and
Zegeye (2017) reveals that majority of the farmers
included in their study were highly participated in forest
resource management. Nevertheless, their finding
indicates that the existence of heterogeneity among rural
community in forest management participation. They
argue that those farmers whose income is heavily
dependent on forest are more likely to participate in
collective forest management.
Challenges and Failures of Collective Forest
Management
Even though collective action is considered as a good
strategy for improving forest management and reduce
forest degradation by nearby local community, a number
of empirical evidences highlighted that many challenges
are being impeding collective action. Collective action
among farmers is difficult to organize, coordinate and
manage. Organizing farmers faces challenges such as
establishing rules to guide the operations of the groups,
securing commitments on the part of the group members
to abide by collectively agreed rules, benefit shares, and
monitoring and enforcing compliance with the rules
(Johnson and Berdegue, 2004; Pingali et al., 2005; Hellin
et al., 2007).
Another study conducted by (Ortmann and King, 2007)
indicated that a number of important challenges impede
collective action, such as free riding, corruption, principal-
agent problems or different sorts of mismatches between
the individual and collective interests. Agrawal (2007) also
argued that the effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability
of forest management is determined by multiple and
complex factors. Due to these, collective action in natural

resource such as forest management has not always been
successful.
Another important factor affects the success of collective
forest management is the nature of property rights. For
example, in common property regimes, clearly defined
property rights for group members could enhance
collective action among a group. Unlike common property
regime, government ownership of forest can erode local
management institutions (Wade, 1988; Meinzen -Dick et
al., 2004). A study conducted by Sanginga et al. (2004) in
southwestern Uganda reported that limited involvement of
local communities in natural resource management policy
development and the formulation of bylaws were major
factors responsible for the increasing degradation of
natural resources.
In Ethiopia, collective action suffers from low managerial
capacity, difficulties in accessing working capital, free-
riding behavior by farmers and other major constraints that
hamper their performance (Ephrem and Dereje, 2015).
Similarly, study conducted in Wolaita zone of Ethiopia
indicated that collective forest management has been
challenged by lack of capital and low social capital, among
other factors (Girma and Zegeye, 2017). Another empirical
study conducted in the south western of Ethiopia reported
that lack of incentive to participate in collective forest
management at local level impeded the successfulness of
collective action to bring sustainable forest management
(Solomon et al., 2017). If better incentives are not provided
for people live in and around forest, to achieve sustainable
forest management, there would be little motivation for
people to participate in collective forest management
(Agrawal and Ostrom, 2001; Degeti, 2003; Adhikari et al.,
2014) .
Several studies have emphasized the importance of
farmers’ characteristics, socio-economic characteristics
and institutional factors in collective forest management in
Ethiopia (Solomon et al., 2017; Girma and Zegeye, 2017;
Kassahun and Omer, 2019). They reported that
educational status, gender, age, home-forest distance,
family sizes, income, land holding size and awareness,
distance from the nearest market and training were crucial
factors affect participation in collective forest
management, among others factors.
Case Studies on Collective Forest Management in
Ethiopia
In the previous sub-sections, the history and trends of
natural resource degradation and management, collective
forest management as policy strategy to achieve
sustainable forest management and challenges being
hindered the success of collective forest management are
reviewed and presented with special focus on Ethiopia. In
this sub-section, attempts were made to critically review
and present two case studies (articles) conducted on
collective forest management in Ethiopia.
The first study was conducted by Alemayehu et al. (2017)
entitled “Performance of participatory forest management
in Ethiopia: institutional arrangement versus local
practices”. Their primary attention was to look at how the
forest resource is being managed practically on the
ground. They acknowledged a growing attention given to
collective forest management and aimed to clarify the
distinction between collective forest management and
forest management by local people. They tried to
investigate the interaction between the PFM institutional
arrangement and local forest management on the other
hand. They also tried to answer how local people act and
react to collective forest management in Ethiopia.
Their findings show that despite the establishment of a
new institutional arrangement (collective forest
management), the local forest management practices
have hardly been shaped by the objectives and rules of
collective forest management approaches (initiatives).
Their finding reveals that a number of factors are limiting
the practical applicability of collective forest management
in Ethiopia. They argue that the establishment and
introduction of collective action was dependent on the
experience of other countries and little attention has been
given to the experiences of local community. In addition,
inability of local government officials to implement a new
cooperative rules in the community, local communities
action contrary to collective goal, the way initiatives
responds to challenges they confronted from local peoples
are among other major factors hindering practical
applicability of collective forest management.
Their generalization is that the implementation of the PFM
approach does not logically follow from the basic ideas as
expressed in policy discourses and institutional rules, but
largely depends on practical logics, which are strongly
rooted in local histories, cultures and settings. Due to this
fact, even if the PFM institutions are carefully crafted and
implemented, they are often unable to modify these
practical logics, situational events and political-historical
experiences of local actors that predominantly shape such
actors’ forest use and management practices.
The second case study considered was conducted by
Tsegaye (2017) entitled “Households’ dependence on
community forest and their contribution to participatory
forest management: evidence from rural Ethiopia”. He tried
to investigate how forest dependence for livelihood at
household level affects collective forest management. He
noted that such dependence on forest could have two
contradictory implication for collective management of
forest resource. On one hand, heavy dependence of the
local community on forest would results in the degradation
of forest. On the other hand, however, dependence on the
resource may induce people to attach more value to the
forest resource and contribute more to the management of
the community forest.

Wegi and Eshetu 645
His findings indicate that local community derive income
from community forest in the form of firewood, inputs for
local drinks and handcrafts, harvesting of forest products
for own house and fence construction, farm implements,
forest related employment and the likes. Members of the
forest user groups have a responsibility to contribute labor
to protect frost from illegal act. However, his survey result
shows that only 50 percent of the minimum required
contributions to the collective forest management has
been achieved. He further noted that the number of hours
spent on patrolling the forest vary from household to
household. To identify factors behind the disparity among
forest user group, he had employed mixed effect linear
regression model. His model result confirms that
dependence on community forest as a source of
households’ livelihood had strong and positive impact on
cooperation in collective forest management. He indicated
that “Households with high dependence on forest products
from community forest contributed more labour for
patrolling through their community forest compared to
households that depended less on community forest for
their livelihood”.
Moreover, His study portrayed that different factors such
as household characteristics, farm characteristics, and
institutional characteristics determine the level of
participation in collective forest management.
CONCLUSIONS
In Ethiopia, natural resource degradation has been
increasingly affecting the livelihood of smallholder farmers
whose livelihood is heavily dependent on natural
resources such as forest and forest products. This has
been attracted government, different non-governmental
organizations and researchers to contribute their parts to
achieve sustainable forest management. Comparison
between state forest management and collective forest
management by local community towards achieving
sustainable forest management have been attracted the
attention of researchers and academicians.
State forest management have been policy option to
conserve forest for a long time in Ethiopia. However, state
based forest resource managements have not been
successful and most of the forest resource in Ethiopia have
been degraded. State effort to own forest resource, lack of
enforcing regulations, lack of forest user (local
communities) participation, rent seeking behavior of
government officials and corruption at different levels of
government organs contributed for the failure of top-down
approach (state) forest resource management in Ethiopia.
In Ethiopia, collective forest management have been
recently emerged as a policy option following the failure of
the state forest management. This bottom-up approach
(collective forest management) have showed positive
results towards achieving sustainable forest management
in Ethiopia. An important component of this bottom-up
policy approach includes the recognition of rights of local
community in managing natural resources. Moreover, the
collection of rights and obligations devolved to local
community provides positive incentives to collectively
maintain and restore forest resources and realize forest
conservation practices on the ground.
In general, collective forest management has increased
the livelihood, the natural resource base and the social
assets of the local communities. On top of these, collective
forest management strategy could attain the sustainability
of the forest and accelerate the standard of household’s
livelihood.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their
constructive comments which helped us a lot to improve
the quality of the manuscript to its current form.
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Accepted 25 September 2019
Citation: Wegi B, Eshetu O (2019). Collective Action for
Forest Management, Challenges and Failures: Review
Paper from Ethiopia in Particular. Journal of Agricultural
Economics and Rural Development, 5(3): 640-647.
Copyright: © 2019: Wegi and Eshetu. This is an open-
access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original author and source are cited.

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