Potential of institutional arrangements for sustainable management of forests under co-management with local forest organisations in Mua-Livulezi Forest Reserve, Mtakataka, Malawi

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.