Participatory forest management and smallholder farmers' livelihoods improvement nexus in Northwest Ethiopia

Participatory forest management (PFM) focuses on local communities as key stakeholders for sustainability. It entails access to some of or all of forest resources products that ensure a sustainable flow of goods and services. The objective of the study is to assess the contribution of PFM practices to smallholder farmers' livelihood improvement. A cross-sectional survey design was employed to collect information from randomly selected household heads in two rural peasant associations. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential test. The binary logistic result revealed that most of the economic, social, biophysical, and institutional factors are significant (P <0.01 or P <0.05) to influence self-reported PFM contribution to livelihood improvement condition of the communities either directly or indirectly. Apparently, forest resource management is impossible without the proper participation of the local communities.