This study evaluates the efficacy of Improved Forest Management for Sustainable Livelihoods Program (IFMSLP) in communities adjacent to Mua-Livulezi Forest Reserve, Malawi. The program is specifically aimed at alleviating poverty and enhance rural livelihoods through promoting greater community involvement in forest management while providing access and associated benefits. The study therefore evaluated the effect of the program on community organisation, forest access, forest use, product availability and commercialisation of forest products. The results show that despite the program putting in place strategies for the people to access different products for different uses; forest use is restricted mainly to subsistence use rather than cash income. The main forest product collected by the people for livelihood was firewood, mainly for cooking and heating. This is an indication that forests are an important natural capital for subsistence rather than cash income. Gender, location of the village, and distance to the nearest forest area were significant predictors of households' forest use. Introduction of the co-management program has not brought out the expected outcomes in areas of community organization, forest access, forest product availability and commercialisation of forest products. A multi-institutional approach is recommended to draw upon diverse talents and experiences from individual institutions both government and non-governmental in order to achieve meaningful social change.

Adoption of participatory forest management has initiated the trend of transfer of access, management and control of forest resources from government to committee based institutions. Hence, understanding the institutional arrangements that support implementation of comanagement with Local Forest Organisations is crucial for sustainable forest management. This study therefore examined the potential and contribution of institutional arrangements to sustainable forest management under co-management arrangement in Mtakataka, Malawi. Our results show that while co-management has created new multi-level local forest organizations in the communities, the potential of the organizations to contribute to sustainable forest management has been negatively affected by lack of appropriate power and legitimacy. There are clear and well defined boundaries for the forest resources and communities involved in comanagement of the forest reserve. However, co-management is faced with issues such as low participation of community members, ineffective rule enforcement, inadequate human and financial resources, and conflict of forest use. Despite these issues, it is concluded that with improvement in the co-management program, the local forest organisations have potential to achieve sustainable management of forest resources. It is thus recommended that the LFOs should be encouraged to follow what was jointly agreed upon and documented in the management plans. The management plans should also be regularly evaluated and effectively monitored for sustainable management and use of the forest products.

Forests are important natural capital for forest-adjacent communities and play an important role in dealing with risks and shocks. The study therefore examined the roles of forests in rural livelihoods in Dedza district eastern Malawi with focus on basic needs and assets, shocks and coping strategies. The findings showed that efforts were made by the co-management program in the study area to increase the livelihood capitals of the people, but the extent could not be ascertained. There were gaps in meeting basic needs of the households with forest products playing an insignificant role in both livelihood and coping strategies. The forest mainly supports subsistence needs with negligible contribution toward provision of safety net and as a pathway out of poverty. The main livelihood strategies were farm based, wage based and diversified. The prominent shocks that the households faced were serious crop failure and serious illness. Casual work, sale of agricultural products and reducing consumption constituted the prominent coping strategies of the people. The study further showed that landholding size and age are the main determinants of livelihood diversification. Longitudinal data collection is, therefore, recommended to investigate further the nature of contribution of forests to livelihood diversification at household level.