The Effects of Community Forestry on the Livelihood of Local Users: A Study of Thanimai Community Forest in Bara district

Abstract

The study entitled ‘The Effects of Community Forestry on the Livelihoods of Local Users’ has been conducted in Bara district with aiming at assessing the effects of community forestry on the local livelihoods. It was confined to the contribution of Community Forest (CF) to the users, its effects on the factors of natural capital, status of social capital and the participation of users in different activities in the study area. Both primary and secondary data were collected in order to complete this task. The methods used in during data collection were focus group discussion, direct observation, and questionnaire survey. Eighty households were selected from forest users group representing the users of different economic classes. The secondary data were collected from the operational plans of FUGs, office records, and published and unpublished literatures. Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) and Ms Excel where frequency distribution was mostly used. Simple tables, bar, pie were used while interpreting the result. This study has revealed that the forest users of medium economic class have been more contribute from the community forests as compared to that of other economic classes. The community forestry program has improved the social capital, drowned positive effects on the factors of natural capitals and of users and the level of participation has been found good in plantation, conservation, meetings, assemblies and fair in skill development trainings, IGAs and NTFPs management.