Livelihood investments as incentives for community forestry in Africa

This study examines community incentives to participate in donor-sponsored community forestry initiatives using the case of a multi-year biodiversity conservation and sustainable livelihood project in West Africa sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development. In this project, communities established community forests and prohibited most extractive uses to promote forest biodiversity conservation, receiving livelihood and water infrastructure investments in return. I assess whether livelihood investments are an effective incentive-based conservation strategy for community forestry initiatives, and in what context; and, once external project support ends, whether community forestry based on this incentive strategy persists. I examined community forestry in 27 communities across three study areas in Guinea and Sierra Leone between 2012 and 2015, when the project ended, and conducted a follow-up assessment in 2018 to see whether community forestry persisted post-project. I found that, despite mixed benefits from livelihood activities, livelihood investments were effective incentives for community forestry during the project’s lifetime. Most successful were Village Savings and Loan Associations and tree nurseries and plantations (coffee, cacao, oil palm, rubber), both of which provided tangible economic benefits to participating households. Intrinsic incentives associated with the ecosystem services community forests provide were also important. All but one community forest persisted 2.5 years post-project, though management byelaws had informally changed in many community forests to allow more extractive uses. These changes were least evident in the study area where benefits from livelihood investments were greatest and endured. This study demonstrates that livelihood investments can be effective in-kind incentives for community forestry in Africa, whether as central or ancillary incentives, but more effort is needed to design livelihood investments that deliver their expected benefits. Context also matters; there is a need to better understand the relationship between incentive types, community forestry model, and the social-ecological conditions in which community forestry occurs.