Abstract:
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.
