Perceptions of forest-dependent communities toward participation in forest conservation: A case study in Bago Yoma, South-Central Myanmar

The forestry sector in Myanmar continues to face many challenges concerning sustainable forest management. Even though the participation of local people is a key principle of forest policy in Myanmar, there is ample opportunity for people's participation in forest conservation to be improved. This study aimed to identify what factors should be considered to promote the participation of local people in forest conservation. The primary objectives were: to investigate the perceptions of people in forest-dependent communities towards forest conservation, and: to determine which policy interventions would be most appropriate for motivating local people to participate in forest conservation. We studied several communities in the Bogo Yama Region of Myanmar as a case study, involving interviews with key informants, focus group discussions, and interviews among 330 randomly selected households using semi-structured questionnaires to conduct a survey. For the interview survey, three hypothetical incentives to promote forest conservation interventions were specified, namely, (i) direct payment, (ii) providing income opportunities, and (iii) providing land tenure security or temporary land use rights to cultivate agricultural crops. The qualitative and quantitative data attained were integrated and analyzed using binary logistic regression. We observed that the communities utilized forests mainly for domestic energy supply, earning income, and regulating local weather. The respondents reported that deforestation occurred mainly because of legal and illegal charcoal making, over-exploitation of non-timber forest products, and logging. A willingness to participate in forest conservation differed in relation to the physical conditions of local communities, in the form of resource availability, remoteness of the village, and farm-land availability, as well as depending on people's awareness of the seriousness of deforestation and the need for food security. Providing income opportunities was identified as the most important incentive for peoples' participation. The results of this study suggest that forest policy makers should consider the different preferences for incentives among different communities, which vary depending on the socio-economic characteristics of the people and the physical and social conditions of the locality.