Interaction between Rural People’s Basic Needs and Forest Products: A Case Study of the Katha District of Myanmar

Abstract

The understanding of interaction between rural people and forest products is one of the challenges faced while balancing forest product utilization with forest conservation in Myanmar. This study aims to contribute an effort to such challenges by analyzing the interaction of rural households with forest products in Myanmar. Data were collected using face-to-face questionnaire interviews with 218 households and conducting a rapid tree inventory across 132 circular random plots in selected rural communities around four townships of the Katha District. The empirical results indicate that the 95% of rural households were entirely dependent on forest products. The survey documented 13 main forest products and 54 tree species, which were primarily used for household consumption. Low-income households compared with medium-and high-income households with low educational level ( < 0.05) and a small agricultural land area ( < 0.05) were found to be more forest-dependent households. Illegal logging, mining, fuelwood collection, slash-and-burn agriculture, and the establishment of forest plantations were reported as the main causes of forest products depletion. Findings from this study, although at a microlevel, can be used by the Myanmar Forestry Department as baseline information to improve community-based forest management activities.

The Critical Nexus and Implications of Smallholder Tobacco Production as a Livelihood Strategy to Forest Landscapes in Zimbabwe

“…However, there was need for government intervention in strengthening institutions that cushioned the farmers in the form of land tenure, contractual issues and the provision of long lasting infrastructure besides the operational finance provided by the private contracting firms [23]. In Nepal, studies have shown that community participation in forestry programs has yielded an increase in forest product output and better forest outlook, but there is dearth of studies on the financial returns of such participation at the household level [20,47].…”

“…Ongoing deforestation, deterioration of forest resources in conjunction with loss of biodiversity and habitat fragmentation in the tropics have been a worldwide concern [16][17][18][19]. This is because on a global scale, about 1.6 billion people's livelihoods are anchored on forest resources in the rural areas which have negative effects on the environment including climate change [20]. There is therefore one critical question that keeps lingering in relation to the reliance on forest resources for poor rural households around the world:…”

“…. About 75 per cent of the poverty stricken population in the developing world reside in the rural and they are overly dependent on natural resources (with forests contributing a significant portion, therefore critical) for their livelihoods in terms of subsistence and income generation[20,24,28,31,36]. In Zimbabwe the rural population constitutes about 70 percent of the total population.…”

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“…Forest resources play an important role in the livelihoods of local communities for various products. Forest function as the main source of primary and secondary income for rural household (Moe et al 2016;Langan et al, 2016;Hlaing et al, 2017;Toe et al 2017). Local communities do business in the forest with a pattern that has become a culture of society with an orientation of economic and social needs, while environmental aspects are often an obstacle due to the limited ability of local communities.…”

“…The results of a study conducted by Hlaing et al (2017) provides information that politicians and decision makers that local residents can be considered as one of the stakeholders of conservation activities and are designed i a participatory community-based forest management (CBFM) strategy that balances the conservation and use of forest products. Forest management activities that involve many rural communities, both as managers and as forest workers, are the key to the success of forest management.…”