Factors Influencing Participation of the Local Community in Natural Resource Conservation: A Comparative Study of Chiro and Fiche, Ethiopia

Abstract

Most of the Ethiopia’s poor people live in rural areas and make their living largely through the land on which they live. Their enterprises and households collectively account for much of the land, water and labor engaged in agricultural production. The rural poor contribute greatly to the economic growth of their country. They play a critical role in managing and conserving the natural resources. At the same time, they are often constrained to farm degraded land that is increasingly unable to meet their needs, or mismanage productive land because of lack of appropriate tools or knowledge. Thus the cycle of poverty /environmental degradation/remain unbroken. Conservation of natural resources is now usually embraced in the broader conception of conserving the earth itself by protecting its capacity for self-renewal. However, natural resource degradation is one of the most serious environmental problems in Ethiopia. The main problem to be addressed in this article was factors influencing active participation of the local communities (farmers) in watershed development and other natural resource conservation efforts which are in progress. Data were collected using survey instrument from 304 head of households sample population in Fiche and Chiro areas within Ethiopia. Binomial logistic regression model was utilized to identify factors that determine active participation of the local communities within the above mentioned locations. Comparison of the two study areas investigated that active participation of the local communities in natural resource conservation depends on a host of factors such as leaders’ knowledge and commitment of the leader for resource conservation; availability and accessibility of forage yields and equitable benefit sharing; participation of the local communities in decision-making processes related to benefit sharing; lack of support from the government. Among the total sample population, the model correctly predicted 88.8% and 71.7% of the observations in Chiro and Fiche respectively.

Keywords: watershed development, community participation, natural resource conservation