1. Economic and ecological outcomes of community-based forest management: A case study from Benin, West Africa
Rodrigue Castro Gbedomon, Anne Floquet,
Roch Mongbo, Valère Kolawolé Salako, Adandé Belarmain Fandohan, Achille Euphrem Assogbadjo & Romain Glèlè kakaї
September 10, 2015
Student Conference on Conservation Sciences
Bengaluru, India

2. OUTLINE
Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion

3. BACKGROUND AND PROBLEM ADDRESSED CONSERVATION BIOLOGISTS
People depend on forests for food, medicines, firewood, cultural ceremonies, and making home
CONSERVATION BIOLOGISTS
We MUST protect the forests as well as the people who totally depend on them!
Tree cover loss in 2014 = 18 millions of hectares (Global Forest Watch, 2015)

4. SOLUTION HYPOTHESIS: CHANGE THE FOREST GOVERNANCE Local people
(Nagendra et al. 2005, Blaikie 2006)
SOLUTION
HYPOTHESIS: CHANGE THE FOREST GOVERNANCE
Joint Forest Management
Social Forest Management
Participatory Forest Management
Community-based Forest Management
ETC
History of forest governance in Sub Saharan Africa
Community forestry
Local people
Colonists
Central State
Central state+ Local People
Till XIXe
XIX-1960
After 1960
From 1990
RESULTS
Failure or relative success
(Nagendra et al. 2005, Blaikie 2006, RPI 2012.)

5. CHANGE THE FOREST GOVERNANCE
FAILED: WHY?
1. Willingness of State to retain important control over forest resources. Only part of properties rights are transferred to local communities (Cronkleton et al. 2012).
We expected positive outcomes (economic and ecologic) with increased property rights transferred to local communities.
2. Local communities feel less concerned for the conservation of forest resources and develop unsustainable practices.
CHANGE THE FOREST GOVERNANCE
3. Connectivity between forest property rights and livelihood of local forest dependent communities and forest conditions (Lambini and Nguyen 2014).

6. AIMS
Analyse economic and ecological outcomes of the governance system of Tobé-Kpobidon (TK) forest

7. HAVE IMPORTANT PROPERTY RIGHT TO LOCAL PEOPLE
STUDY AREA
Tobé-Kpobidon (TK) FOREST
HAVE IMPORTANT PROPERTY RIGHT TO LOCAL PEOPLE

8. METHOD 1: Evaluation of the economic outcomes
SAMPLING OF PEOPLE (RESPONDENTS) AROUND FOREST
U1-α/2 (α = 0.05) = 1.96;
p = 16.5 % (proportion of forest users)
d= 8% (margin error)
Step 1
(Dagnelie 1998) 40 21 22
FULL ACCESS
HAVE ACCESS BUT NEED PERMISSION
VERY LIMITED ACCESS
CLASSIFICATION OF SAMPLES BASED ON ACCESS TO FOREST RESOURCES
Step 2
CALCULATION OF CONTRIBUTION OF FORESTS ON ANNUAL INCOME
A. Monetary and non monetary income
B. Monetary income
Step 3
%Rfi=contribution of forest to annual income of respondent ‘i’
GOP forest i= income of all productive activity related to forest.
GOPi= income of all productive activity of respondent ‘i’
%Rfi=contribution of forest to annual cash flow,
CF foresti=annual cash flow of all productive activity of related to forests,
Cfi= cash flow of all productivity activity of respondent i.

9. METHOD 2: EVALUATION OF THE ECOLOGICAL OUTCOMES
A. Change in TK forest landscape
Perception analysis (Dynamic of TK forest landscape)
Land use dynamic analysis (to support the perception analysis)
B. Forest biodiversity and growth
Forest inventory (50 plots of 50 x 50 m2)
NMDS in the SPSS v16 software using ALSCAL procedure + hierarchical cluster analysis (Individualizing vegetation types)
Floristic diversity parameters (species richness, Shannon diversity index and Pielou evenness)
Growth and woody species population trend analysis (dendrometric parameters)

10. 1. Economic outcomes of the system of TK forest governance
RESULTS
1. Economic outcomes of the system of TK forest governance
25.65%
17.08%
0.09%
3.15%
16.47%
0.0%

11. 2. Ecologic outcomes of the system of TK forest governance
TK forest was mainly savannah before 1995 and was cultivated by Holli.

12. 2. Ecologic outcomes of the system of TK forest governance
Inverse ‘j’ shape
Floristic diversity and dendrometric parameters
VT1
VT2
VT3
p-value
Whole TK forest m
Cv (%)
Cv %)
Cv(%)
Floristic diversity
Species richness (S, species)
75.00 -
52.00
63.00
91.00
Shannon diversity (H, bits)
5.09
4.60
4.77
5.40
Pielou eveness (Eq)
0.82
0.81
0.80
0.83
Dendrometric parameters
Trees density (N, stems.ha-1)
207.86
45.93
252.00
55.77
298.75
30.35
0.021
242.24
44.21
Mean diameter (D, cm)
23.13
18.06
31.08
42.85
27.60
24.34
0.002
25.51
27.81
Basal area (G, m².ha-1)
9.03
57.21
18.68
66.59
18.49
50.02
0.030
13.21
67.68
3% of the national flora (Akoegninou et al. 2005)

13. CONCLUSIONS
Could we expected positive outcomes (economic and ecologic) with increased property rights transferred to local communities?
YES, …..
Those who are most dependent and/or most involved in forest conservation are not those who profit most. This discrepancy might not affect the sustainability of such system of governance as cash benefits are not highly influencing stakeholders’ willingness to counter threats in forest management (Salafsky et al. 2001).
This alternative system of forest governance could be used elsewhere in its principle (Increase the property right of local communities on forests).

14. Acknowledgement THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!! www.labef-uac.org
Anne Floquet (Associate Professor in Agricultural economics)
Romain Glèlè Kakaï (Full Professor in Biostatistics and Forest modelling)
Karin Ostertag (Fondation Aide à l’Autonomie Tobé)
Tirth Raj Ghimire, PhD (Global Primate Network)
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!!