English 2.28MB - Center for International Forestry Research

| Conclusion and recommendations
Among the eight main land covers, forests are divided into three categories:
big tree forests, small tree forests and plantations. The fact that villagers include
plantations in the forest category seems related to the official forest status
of plantation lands. Species richness is high in Khe Tran and even potentially
monotonous land cover types such as plantations or rice fields still have high nontree
diversity, which enables and maintains their multiuse function. Villagers still
use a wide range of species for their livelihoods, partly from the natural forests
but, under present conditions, mainly from the cultivated areas.
Participatory mapping also showed that knowledge on forest products,
wildlife and other natural resources is still important for villagers, even if this
knowledge tends to be limited in diversity of resources and in area covered. Apart
from this ethno-botanical knowledge, we found that villagers also have a strong
sense of ownership when they discuss land tenure in the village, repartition of
plantation responsibilities and expectations for the future. Local people represent
no imminent threat to the recorded endangered species. The direct impact of human
activities on forest cover at present cannot be quantified based on our sampling.
Forest, including natural forest and plantations, is the most important
landscape element for all the villagers for all the products that can be collected
from it. Perceptions of forest types vary by gender and according to accessibility
and activities performed. For men, plantation is the most important category
because of the economic benefits, while for women it is natural forest because of
the diversity of NTFPs encountered.
With respect to different time frames, forest in the present (including
plantations) is the least important, because of the actual resources depletion, the
government ban on all natural resource collection in the forest and the actual
alternative activities. Forest of the past is considered more important, because of
all the activities that were possible then. Domesticated resources are considered
more important than any other category, wild or purchased. The government
policy on the PDNR has affected dependency on forest resources.
Even if the knowledge on natural resources is still important considering
the new management activities, we observe that the knowledge on forest is
progressively decreasing. Local people still recognize the different roles of the
forest in general, but have difficulty to provide information on specific resources.
A big contribution to conservation could be realized by integrating the local
point of view into it and by preserving the local knowledge. The main threat
identified by villagers is logging, followed by forest fires. This ranking shows
that there is awareness of the risks for the forest, but also for local livelihoods, of
engaging in unsustainable activities.
The villagers explained that they would like to be part of the conservation
process, for various reasons: to get access to the resources, to enhance their rights
to the land, to get payment for the activities they would perform for the FPD. They
expect also to be able to negotiate the use of some of the resources, mainly NTFPs,
but logging as well. They want to collaborate with conservation institutions, not
only for the reasons mentioned above, but also to keep the forest as a safety net
for the future.