No.31 Impact of Community Management on Forest Protection: Evidence from an Aid-Funded Project in Ethiopia

This study uses remote sensing data to quantitatively examine the impact of establishing participatory forest management associations in Ethiopia. The results indicate that where there is a forest association, forest area declines more in the year the association is established than it does in a forest area where there is no association. This suggests that villagers may engage in “last-minute” logging. However, one year after associations are established, forest area where there is an association increases substantially, probably due to the associations planting trees at boundary areas between forest and non-forest and monitoring illegal logging. On average, where there are forest associations, forest area increases by 1.5 percent in the first two years, while forest area where there is no association declines by 3.3 percent. Totaling this impact over two years yields a 4.8 percent positive net increase in the rate of change.