Frontier community valuation for forest patches: the case of wondo-wosha subcatchment, southern nations, nationalities and peoples region Ethiopia

Many societies recognize forests as valuable resources. Particularly, in resource dependent rural areas of developing countries, communities tend to create a body of natural resources around them. Forests are one of these resources. The objective of this paper is to define the value and contribution of forests to the rural household economy. The study applied contingent valuation method. A questionnaire survey was conducted on 148 respondents each representing households from six peasant associations surrounding the natural forest. Summary results of the mean willingness to pay for a single household was 30.30 Ethiopian birr (ETB) (US$ 1 = 8.7 ETB) per year and 2.50 ETB per month. The mean willingness to accept for a single household was 44.6 ETB per year and 3.70 ETB per month. Moreover, about 72% of the respondents gave the value of the forest at a price of 30 ETB or more per year while 18% of the respondents agreed to pay nothing assuming that they have traditional rights to the land and/or have low level of income. The analysis suggested that household income, as indicated by the farm and livestock has brought minimum influence on appropriating the values. Therefore, it can be concluded that, even the poor households were willing to pay the average values in terms of time or labor contribution to save the natural forest like the better-off households. On the other hand, community valuations for forest resources in the catchment do not vary much in magnitude when the payment vehicle was changed from cash to labor contribution. Therefore, people are concerned about conservation issues, what so ever their status and the situations are. The concept of valuing forests is well supported by the community, which indicates the importance of recognizing and nurturing such positive attitudes for better people¿forest area relationships. Key words: Contingent valuation; Valuation; National accounting, Household economy, Forest conservatio