Challenges of Participatory Forest Management in Ethiopia

Many African countries have recently embarked through decentralized forest management schemes such as through Participatory Forest Management (PFM). In Ethiopia context, PFM has been initiated since the 1990s. Despite such moves to devolve management responsibilities to forest adjacent communities research done on the subject is still quite inadequate. On top of this, the application of community forestry (such as PFM)varies across different social and environmental context. Thus, this has made the learning so peculiar that a wealth of lesson needs to be drawn to mainstream community participation into national forest policy and practices. In addition, it is also highly important to study factors affecting people's participation in PFM and associated challenges entailed in its implementation and gather lessons to apply them for further participatory natural resource management schemes. Similarly,the lessons drawn from such study may contribute to current efforts by governments, NGOs and researchers to find better policy options to address the problem of forest degradation.