3.1. Description of the Villagers
The household characteristics and policy variables from the survey were assessed to explain features and variation of the study area (
Table 1). The age range was 20 to 83 years, and there was a slight non-significant age gap regarding the household average age, with households under JFM being three years older (48), on average, than CBFM (45) households. Most people at the study site could be characterised as middle-aged. The observed situation could be caused by the emigration of many youths (15–35 years) to other cities for economic reasons, which was also reported by Songoro (2014), who observed the average age to be 47 years. In terms of gender, households surrounding JFM had more female-headed households, 42 (53%), as compared to 34 CBFM (42%), even though no significant difference was observed. While the distribution provides a good gender composition for analysis, it also highlights that men often migrate to cities due to the land shortage, low productivity, and the need to search for jobs [
43].
The average number of years of schooling ranged from 6.11 to 6.38 for CBFM and JFM, respectively, which indicates a lower literacy level in the WUMs villages. The basic primary level of education in Tanzania is seven years [
78]. Therefore, the assumption is that the majority of household members were only primary school leavers. The illiteracy level findings are similar to what was reported by References [
43,
48]. This situation may have necessitated villagers to supplement their needs from the forest due to fewer opportunities. The mean household size (AEU) range from 5.52 to 5.68 for CBFM and JFM, respectively. The larger size of households may give a slight advantage for NTFPs collection in households, which are under JFM.
From
Table 1, what stands out is that many villagers were involved in farming activities as a principal economic activity, considering themselves as ‘
wakulima’(Swahili term for people practising rain-fed agriculture.). The CBFM households recorded a significantly (
p = 0.0471) larger number of farmers, 77 (96%), as compared to JFM households of 69 (87%). However, on average, the CBFM households farmed at a significantly smaller area (2.35 acres) than JFM (3.09 acres) households. The smaller farmed area might explain a possible significantly (
p = 0.001) longer average months of a food shortage per annum in CBFM (2.84) compared to JFM (2.38). The significant negative correlation between the size of the farms with the length of the food shortage month (
r = 0.172,
p = 0.0295), usually the highest in May [
79], confirms this fact. Food shortage prevalence in the WUMs was also observed by others [
43,
48].
The crops cultivated depended on household needs, but most were for subsistence and cash. The crops include maize, beans for food, Irish potatoes, and cash horticultural crops including carrots, cabbages, onions, and tomatoes. The farmers grow the Irish potatoes and horticultural products in the valley bottoms, which benefit with water from the forest. Despite the land size, agricultural productivity is limited by a poor soil condition [
51] and farming technologies, which causes many households to experience a food shortage for an average of three months on an annual basis.
The survey also indicates that the JFM villagers’ have a significantly higher perceived dependency on the forest (
p < 0.0001) in comparison to CBFM. The perceived dependency is based on the household’s own reported ranking since the way they see the forest is important to them. Some villagers around the JFM forest benefit more from the forest due to the availability of products obtained in the
Taungya arrangement. Therefore, this attaches more dependency on it. It has also been observed that, through the
Taungya, farmers gain flexibility on food crops [
2]. Farmers in the study villages also diversify by keeping livestock to cover up for shortages or selling during needy times. Various livestock are kept by the farmers, including cattle, sheep, goats (shoats), chicken, rabbits, and ducks.
The average tropical livestock unit (TLU) (TLU values are 0.5 for cattle, 0.1 for sheep/goats, 0.03 for ducks, 0.02 for rabbits, and 0.01 for chicken [
80,
81]) ranged from 0.77 to 0.79 around JFM and CBFM households, respectively. The average TLU is, however, lower than what was reported in other villages in the WUMs at an average of 1.14 TLU [
37].
What is also interesting from
Table 1 is the fact that CBFM farmers take a significantly (
p = 0.017) longer time (33 min) to reach the forest areas as compared to JFM (28.46 min) on average, which is a possible explanation for a perceived lower dependency on the forest. The time taken could also be the result of the mountainous terrain around Chambogo, which is also a highly degraded area. Furthermore, CBFM villagers take longer (30 min) on average to reach the market center as compared to JFM (26 min) villagers.
To summarise, the communities in the study site are characterised by households that are generally poor, mostly engaging themselves in agriculture, which is typical for many villages in Tanzania with few assets such as livestock and small farming areas (Shambas) (Swahili name for a farming plot). The households are large-sized, with most of the households’ heads being middle-aged and several women-headed households are prevalent. Due to a poor economic condition, most villagers are informed about high forest dependency to supplement their needs. The food shortage is also a recurrent situation for many villagers.
3.4. Factors Influencing Participation Components
The villagers’ interest and their ultimate participation are influenced by the number of factors (
Table 3). A total of 13 variables (hypothesised in
Section 2.2.2.) entered the regression. However, model simplification [
86] allowed stepwise removal of the variables, which were non-significant predictors and remained with five significant variables. The independent variables explained 6.5%, 17.8%, and 20.6% of economic benefits, which met attendance and forest protection, respectively. At least two independent variables significantly explain the variation in each of the components of participation.
From
Table 3, villagers with longer food shortage months perceive less economic benefit, and those located in the JFM regime perceive more economic benefit from the forest. The food shortage is also linked to a negative correlation with farm size (p = 0.0295). It implies that villagers might be spending time for other activities such as looking for casual wage labour and less time for NTFPs collection, and, therefore, perceive less economic importance from the forest. The JFM regime might offer increased access to the forest resource. Accordingly, villagers have improved economic participation.
Villagers benefit from their involvement in meetings as they acquire the opportunity to present their concerns. Households with many household members and those based in the JFM regime had a positive association with meeting attendance, while those that experienced severe food shortages also experienced decreased participation in the meetings. The heads of larger households took the opportunity to attend the meetings more because they might be at higher risk of being affected by unfavourable decisions.
Households that experienced more months of the food shortage were also less likely to benefit from meetings, likely because they might also be poor and, therefore, meetings come with a high opportunity cost for them. It might also be the case that poor people do not have as good a chance to influence decision-making, which is mostly dominated by powerful people [
56], and, hence, less motivated to engage in such processes. Furthermore, in the JFM regime, households participated more in the meetings than those in the CBFM regime. During the mid-1990s, popularisation of JFM led to meetings between villagers and forest officials, which may have influenced meeting participation. Moreover, the JFM regime offers villagers more access to resources than CBFM, and, thus, people were more interested in participating in the meetings.
In the WUMs, it is common for women to be household heads due to the emigration of men [
43]. The female-headed households’ increased years of education and increased food shortage months had a negative influence on participation in forest protection, such as patrol or firefighting, which women might also perceive to be dangerous. As such, protection activities are predominantly male in the WUMs. A study in Nepal [
62] also indicated a similar tendency for men participation in forest protection. Furthermore, women mostly rely on various small products from the forest to support their livelihoods [
87,
88].
Women can, thus, participate in forest protection by reporting illegal activities. They might encounter while they collect, for example, fuelwood or other NTFPs. On the other hand, increased education resulted in less participation in forest protection since higher levels of education in WUMs, presumably, offer employment or alternative income opportunities, which reduced dependency on forest resources. Studies elsewhere [
30,
58,
66] have shown education positively influence participation such as in forest conservation and social aspects. However, apart from the general education, villagers in WUMs had opportunity to other agricultural and resource management training, which improved the awareness of nature. Additionally, increased food shortage months decreased villagers’ participation in forest protection because the villagers do not find the motivation to protect the forest since they experience food insecurity.
3.5. Participation Intensity
In this study, the participation intensity refers to the perceived extent to which households engage in forest activities based on the aggregated index of all participation components. The analysis indicates a difference in the participation intensity between institutional regimes with many households in higher levels of participation in the JFM than in the CBFM (
Table 4). Given the duration of time since the introduction of the PFM in the 1990s, the sense of ownership and the security associated with it, community members under CBFM were expected to better engage in different resource management activities to sustain the forest. However, this has not been the case. Theoretically, though, the CBFM arrangement offers the highest level of resource management devolution to the communities [
18,
52] regarding a bundle of property rights [
21]. According to Ostrom [
89], access rights to resources, CBFM, as compared to JFM, provides the highest bundle of rights, including the ability to exclude others.
The findings in
Table 4 might be associated with little direct benefits available from the forest for local peoples’ direct consumption from fuelwood to edible products. The participation in itself is demanding in terms of resources and time [
90]. Therefore, benefits from the forest should compensate and incentivize the community. Historically, in many regions in Africa, the benefits have been low since communities are required to manage ecologically degraded, low-value forests [
22], which is a case similar to CBFM study villages. The effort on the enhancement of the resource has also been minimal due to the historical relationship between the communities and forest administration. The low level of investment might be associated with tenure insecurity resulting from villagers’ low awareness, and local government forest officials’ passivity toward the community forest. The FGDs in CBFM villages revealed that villagers seemed to have little awareness of the responsibility they have in forest management, still believing that management is completely the government’s responsibility. Such a lack of awareness of CBFM was also reported in a study more than a decade ago [
52] and, seemingly, the situation has not improved. There is a view that tenure security is linked to better forest conditions [
91]. A study of CBFM in other parts of Tanzania (Kilwa district) indicated that villagers had more awareness of the role of CBFM and its functions [
18], which is likely associated with the presence of MCDI (Mpingo Conservation and Development Initiative is an NGO advocating community-based management). At the village level, villages under JFM benefit from the part of their income that originates from selling timber from the plantation, which is a benefit lacking in the CBFM regime. Under JFM, villages can collect cash or equipment for social services such as schools. For example, for the past five years, Sunga village had been receiving 10 cubic meters of the timber (equivalent to 3.4 million Tanzanian shillings) as their contribution from the Shagayu forest.
So far, without donor funding, the technical and material support from the local government for the community forest has been minimal or non-existent. The participatory programs are put to a real test in the absence of donor support. Like many other developing countries, Tanzania has a high dependency on donor support in forest management [
28] with more than 90% funding in the forest sector sourced in this way [
92]. The lack or little government investment in assisting management activities in the CBFM villages means that local people are on their own, which translates into reduced interest. Low budgets have also been an excuse by local governments’ natural resources officials to explain why they cannot support village forest-related activities. Moreover, local forest officer’s role in the CBFM program is reported to be technical advisory [
21], but it is not stipulated in the job description, and, therefore, is not directly obliged to ensure the successful functioning of the CBFM under their jurisdiction.
The findings offer insight into the extent of participation over the past two decades in WUMs. From the results, it is possible to deduce that the mere handling of the ownership of the forest to the community does not automatically bring the expected results of better resource management and improved livelihoods. The community support on various activities might also create an aura of trust and a desire to invest and manage the forest in a better way.
Moreover, the regression (OLS) analysis indicates the factors influencing the participation intensity in WUMs (
Table 5). A study in Morogoro [
93] observed that training in the terrace preparation, trees nursery preparation, and planting influenced farmers’ participation in watershed systems. Similarly, in Burkina Faso, training was important in influencing participation in forest activities [
94], particularly in terms of surveillance. Training, therefore, is an important policy variable for influencing participation in the forest activities, and, as the model suggests, it should be a frequent undertaking in the WUMs.
Based on
Table 5, the villagers developed a sense of trust with the NGOs operated in the WUMs, more than with the local administrative institutions. Trust is necessary social capital since it strengthens the relationship between the parties working in collective action to achieve a particular goal. The villagers lamented on the unfulfilled promises and lack of consultation from the local institutions. In one instance, a VNRC committee member in Sunga complained that forest officials were planting trees near the water source without consulting the villagers, which villagers considered disrespectful and trees near the water source were harmful. The low trust level of villagers in local administrative units slows down the support in forest activities since low trust reflects the perception of unreliability [
74]. The study in Mandawa, southern Tanzania, reported a substantial drop in CBFM support due to the villagers’ low trust in environmental committee leaders, which cites bribery and indicates the importance of trust for participation [
18].
Similarly, the intensity of participation is positively correlated with the location, which favours households under JFM compared to CBFM while controlling for other factors. The high participation might be linked with the availability of the benefits from the forest, which, in turn, depends on the resource condition and accessibility. The size difference between Shagayu and Chambogo might translate into more advantages to villagers around Shagayu regarding the area for resource access. Shagayu’s size is at least 13 times larger than that of Chambogo. However, the size-effect is controlled by three key factors such as the institution in place, which regulates access to the forest since villagers are only allowed to collect NTFPs and not allowed to cut trees in natural forest areas for a specific reason. Second, the area’s physical condition, which limits accessibility due to its hilly nature, therefore, ease in spotting illegal activities. Third, the JFM arrangement is between the state and the villages bordering the forest. Therefore, villages control each other from accessing forest areas under their management. The Shagayu Forest borders 13 other villages [
43]. The greater accessibility to the Shagayu forest could, therefore, be primarily attributed to the resource base that supports the claim that communities in Chambogo are mostly charged with managing forests that are already in a poor condition.
In order to improve resource access in Chambogo, there is a need for forest restoration. The challenge of the long wait before the forest benefits are realised means that, without other forest-related benefits, incentives that motivate villagers to participate will be low. Activities such as beekeeping could help link the benefits flow to forest restoration, which takes advantage of the beekeeping officers who are employed at local government levels. A Madagascar-based study [
73], for example, indicated the potential of beekeeping in motivating participation due to linkage to the forest benefits.
The Tanzanian forest policy (statement 11) advocates for the incorporation of beekeeping activities in the forest reserves [
92,
95], while beekeeping policy (statement 2 and 16) encourages the establishment of bee reserves by the communities and apiaries in public lands by individual or co-operative beekeepers [
95].
However, beekeeping dissemination has not been convincing, which denies communities’ potential benefits and development. Linked to alternative income activities, the support of the environmental groups in villages should be motivated since these might influence other villagers to engage in positive forest practices. It is known that, if the community members realise more benefits from the forest, they tend to organise and protect the forest [
96].
The finding of the high confidence level of the NGOs operated in the WUMs is somewhat surprising given the time interval since NGOs ended project activities in the villages. Despite the reported difficult start of operations of projects such as Soil Erosion Control and Agroforest Project (SECAP) [
44], the communities became acquainted with the NGOs’ operations and trust developed among them. The findings indicate the overall importance of social capital regarding the trust necessary to instill motivation and participation in forest management. The low confidence in the local administrative structures could be due to unfulfilled promises to the villagers. Furthermore, forest management appears to be the lowest priority sector in the local administration. Therefore, few resources are allocated.
The findings, generally, can be described in the perspective of the participation dimensions [
25], giving insightful practical situation of the community participation in the WUMs. The participation dimensions were assessed based on the participants, level of involvement, the participation intensity, participants power and influence, and the participation process aim or goals [
25,
32]. The assessment focus was the villagers bordering the JFM and CBFM forests, which offer a good variation of the success of the PFM program as beneficiaries.
The level of participation, as applied in this study, informs on the scale in which the households rate the program in the provision of benefits and the way community members take part in the forest activities. The message from the analysis is the fact that villagers around the JFM (state-community management) forest participate more than the CBFM (community management) regime. It appears that the JFM-based villagers are motivated by forest-based incentives both at the village and household levels. Similarly, JFM villagers reported higher perceptions on participation levels in the management through protection, and meeting participation.
The intensity of participation gives a deeper understanding of the individual households by qualifying them through an aggregate index, which has been used to classify the households into low and high participating groups. The index also renders itself as a ‘tool,’ which can be used by the policymakers to gauge and improve the situation by understanding the characteristics of high participating and low participating households. Based on the participation index, the bigger number of high-intensity participation households in the JFM regime indicates a relatively better situation compared to the CBFM regime. Notwithstanding, the situation calls for an improvement in both regimes, which is more so in the CBFM.
The power and influence of the stakeholders were not assessed by the study. However, gauging from the FGDs, the knowledge of the villagers regarding tenure rights on the forest on the CBFM side, and information flow seemed to be limited. The limitation gives community little power or influence in various aspects of forest management.
The last aspect from the findings was to understand the achievement of the intended goals or aims of the participation. From the PFM perspective, the goals of resource enhancement through management and governance activities, and benefits flow to the communities has only been achieved at the average level in WUMs, as per villagers’ perception. The normative goals of the participation, however, need the actual empowerment of the communities, which is a long-term endeavour [
71]. The situation in WUMs, especially in the CBFM arrangement, reflects stagnation after the initial foundation investments, which limits empowering the communities on the PFM aims and the overall benefits for the participation in the forest activities.
The findings in this study warrants insightful discussion. It was expected that, however, when the forest management is devolved to the local people such as in CBFM arrangement, the perceived benefit flow, and tenure security will stimulate incentives in the management and improvement of forest conditions [
2]. With the improved benefits and tenure security, the expectation was that, in comparison, villagers in the CBFM arrangement would participate more in forest management. This study, however, has not been able to demonstrate higher levels of participation in the CBFM regime. Instead, the findings indicate that villagers under the JFM regime participate more in both participation components likely facilitated by improved resource condition and better access. Studies in Miombo woodland and coastal forests in Tanzania [
97,
98] indicated improvement in forest conditions after PFM with a better situation under JFM, which is followed by CBFM, while those under a complete state and open regimes had a worsening pattern.
This study hypothesis was found from a historical trend that, in many communities in Africa, are given to manage fragmented low-value forests [
22] similar to CBFM villages. This fact is captured in our study through institutional regimes that proxied forest conditions’ variation between JFM and CBFM. A review study [
99] indicated an information gap linking biophysical conditions with livelihood benefits captured in this study. The study indicated the importance of forest benefits as an overriding component with few benefits indicated in CBFM. The finding is also echoed in other studies in Tanzania related to challenges to livelihood [
38] and revenue generation [
98] in a community-managed forest. In another study [
17], it is argued that longer implementation of community management may result in improved benefits, even though this is not the case in this this study, especially in CBFM.
The interesting message is the relationship between forest conditions and perceived benefits flow that attract incentives for high participation such as JFM in our study. Therefore, in WUMs, improving the forest conditions may enhance benefits flow, which are community incentives. With the improvement of the forest condition, there is optimism to improve benefits flow due to existing regulatory conditions in place notably waiving (avoidance of state royalties), exemption (taking all income from the selling of the products), and levying (income from the fines and penalties) [
98]. The other important aspects in this study are the decision-making expressed in terms of meeting involvement and taking part in the forest protection, which were both low in CBFM. The observation in this study regarding decision-making diverge from Persha and Blomley [
38], which associated more participation in decision-making in the community-managed forests. The situation may be linked with more benefits flow from the JFM forest. The allocation of farming plots through Taungya in the JFM, for example, necessitate communities’ engagement in decision-making since they have interest to protect. Thus, it implies that community ownership and management should go hand-in-hand with benefits flow for the communities to participate. The same applies to the difference of levels of protection activities as the community members protect the forest providing the farming plots and occasional wage labour in the JFM.
The levels where community members can influence the decision-making are also important, for example, in strategic or operational sphere. In WUMs, as was the case in the study in Mexico [
100], the communities in the CBFM engaged to the operational matters such as deciding on the days to access the forest. This was not the case in JFM in which farmers complained about the distribution procedure of Taungya farming plots, which was a contentious issue. However, the communities in both cases had a limited room to question or influence higher levels’ strategic decisions, which is similar to a situation in Mexico where the communities’ influence was limited to the operational level [
100].
Training emerged as critical aspects to improve the participation situation in WUMs, which is similar to studies elsewhere [
27,
101,
102]. Therefore, continuous communities’ trainings are very important for the realization of PFM goals, even though care is necessary not to impose completely outside views while disregarding the community approaches [
100]. The training should align themselves in improving the resource condition as well as the households’ livelihood situations, such as beekeeping [
103], which can bring a better synergy.
Trust in this study has shown to influence participation as an important component of social capital. Management of the resources in WUMs is a collective action that needs state and communities in the JFM and between community members in the CBFM to work together. Trust is a delicate affair, easily eroded with conflicts or parties not fulfilling their expected obligations. The evidence of mistrust between villagers and officials is a historical challenge in PFM transformation in Tanzania [
38], which needs repairing for community effective participation and successful resource management. Overall, due to an interrelationship of various aspects of communities’ resources management, similar to Hajjar et al [
101], the participation might be improved through holistic consideration of the PFM goals. For example, forest benefits are realized from a well-stocked forest with access rights to the communities, which, in turn, should be maintained through strong institutions built on the foundation of social trust with informed communities through regular communication, training, and support. However, the optimal balance of the requirements of all the aspects remains a huge task.
The study offers insights for the assessment of the PFM in Tanzania. In terms of the methods, the approach dissected the two PFM tiers (JFM and CBFM) as well as its components (economic, decision-making, and protection), which enabled a comparison. The authors view that an approach is suitable in other areas of Tanzania for the assessment of the participatory programme. The suitability bases on the argument that the method profiles the main goals of the PFM in Tanzania [
2,
16], which, therefore, ensures objectivity. The findings may highlight the situation in other areas in Tanzania with similar conditions because, in most rural areas, the community members are generally poor, low educated, and have less resource access. However, care should be taken not to generalize the findings for the communities around a rich-forest resource base and experience of NGOs support.
This study is limited by the fact that it is based on community self-reporting of various activities in dealing with the forest that display the intention, and may not reflect the actual behavior. Therefore, the study concedes that variation may exist, which is also highlighted by the planned behavior theory that slight variation might occur between the intention and behavior [
104]. The study also acknowledges that the participation concept is multiscale and can be assessed in different dimensions. For example, our assessment is based on the views of the community only, even though there are other stakeholders in participation such as the state actors or NGOs. Therefore, this study approach is not the only possible way to profile the participation and the ultimate forest management challenge. Future studies might consider different approaches as well as multiple stakeholders and, therefore, understand the problem in the WUMs and the Tanzanian perspective better.