Conclusiones

Management approaches of public forests, whether they are protectionist oriented or incentive-based are important in determining outcomes of conservation and sustainable use (Kant, 2000). From an organizational point of view, a management approach may take the form of centralized management; where state agencies assume the lead role, decentralized management; where local communities are involved at varying levels, private management;

where private entities own and manage the resource, and co-management; where state, local communities and other actors share management functions, rights and responsibilities (Mburu and Birner, 2007; Meinzen-Dick et al, 2002). These management approaches not only define and assign property rights to various stakeholders differently, but they also guide use of the resource and consequently determine the conservation outcomes (Meinzen-Dick and Di Gregorio 2004; Oakerson, 1992). Among other outcomes, forest management approaches ought to meet the needs expected from the resource by the society such as economic efficiency, equitable benefit sharing, appropriate conflict resolution and participatory decision-making.

Public forests are managed as economic resources to generate timber and/or non-timber products as well as ecosystem services such as water catchment, carbon sequestration and soil conservation as well as being reservoirs of biodiversity. Apart from land on which the forests stand, other resources such as capital, cash and labour ought to be allocated in a way that maximizes net benefits from a given outlay of resources (Kao and Yang, 1991; Kao et al, 1993). As noted by Mburu and Birner (2002), efficiency in nature conservation can be viewed as involving two decision problems; first, identifying the level of nature conservation that is efficient (allocative efficiency) and second, identifying the organizational/management structures that makes it possible to achieve the conservation goals at the lowest cost. Whatever form of management approach is chosen, there are associated costs and benefits that arise and are borne by different stakeholders involved in conservation. From the perspective of economic efficiency a management approach would be considered efficient if it generates a net positive contribution to the society regardless of the distribution of the benefits among the different stakeholders. Economic efficiency could

be looked at as a measure of the net contribution of an activity or project to overall social welfare. Thus, economic efficiency is designed to answer the question of whether the redistribution of resources implied by a project or an activity results in improvement of societal welfare. Therefore, given two organizations that generate the same level of benefits, the one that does it at a lower cost can be said to be more efficient. Consequently evaluating efficiency of forest management structures is important for guiding conservation policies (Kao, 1998; Kao and Yang, 1991). However, as noted by Joro and Viitala (1999) there are limited number of studies that have attempted to measure economic efficiency in forest management. In particular there is limited literature on financial and economic analysis in comparing the performance of different management approaches of forest conservation especially in the tropics. This study therefore intends to shed light on how different forms of forest management influence the resulting economic efficiency in a tropical setting. Apart from economic efficiency, understanding distribution of costs and benefits among different stakeholders in conservation is important for guiding equity considerations (Ferraro, 2002). This is particularly important in the case of tropical forest where many forest adjacent communities bear the opportunity cost of conservation i.e. the forgone opportunity to use the forest land for farming activities. Distribution of costs and benefits of conservation has an influence on incentives for or against conservation among different stakeholders.

Apart from economic efficiency concerns, the persistence of degradation of natural resources and failure of simple technical or economic prescription has led researchers to consider the more complex aspects of natural resource management. In this respect, research has pointed out the centrality of the local communities in the process of natural resource management (Wiggins et al, 2004; Trakolis, 2001). It has been widely argued that success of forest conservation efforts will depend on the support of the local communities that live adjacent at the local level (Wiggins et al, 2004; Ferraro, 2002; Trakolis, 2001;

Rasmussen and Meinzen-Dick, 1995). Well-meaning measures of environmental conservation may negatively impact on the livelihoods of the local inhabitants and this may reduce the effectiveness of the intended policies. As noted by Bruce et al (2002), public acceptance is of utmost importance to every management decision that public agencies

make concerning natural resources. In many developing countries, the local people had been managing these forests before they were taken over by local or national governments and in many cases they view themselves as the de facto owners of these forests. As noted earlier, for the particular case of Kakamega Forest, for a long time, the forest was owned and managed by the local people before being taken over by the central government to manage it on their behalf. Therefore, the local people can be looked at as the “clients” on whose behalf the resource is being managed. Any external management intervention can be correctly evaluated from the perspective of the local people. One way of evaluating the forest management approaches from the local communities’ perspective is through generating their satisfaction levels with the way the forest is managed (see Andersson, 2004). Understanding the overall level of satisfaction of local communities with forest management and the relative importance of different aspects of forest management in their overall satisfaction can provide an understanding of how well the management is meeting their expectations. Although rare the concept of consumer satisfaction as applied in service oriented sectors such as education, health and marketing can be adapted and applied in forest management to analyse local community satisfaction. Applying the concept of consumer satisfaction in analyzing community satisfaction with forest management would provide enriched information base for policy decision making. For the particular case of Kakamega forest, there is scanty literature on previous systematic elicitation of the local people’s satisfaction with forest management.

In essence community satisfaction with different aspects of forest management reveals underlying perception about the different management approaches. However, more often than not, the perceptions of the local communities about management of natural resources are not systematically elicited, evaluated and incorporated in the decision-making processes (Chase et al, 2004). For the particular case of Kakamega forest, there is scanty literature on previous systematic analysis of the local people’s perception of existing forest management approaches. The Forest presents a unique opportunity to compare local communities’

perception of three existing forest management approaches. Understanding how local communities perceive forest management by external agencies is important for designing management policies that address the dual goal of community interest and conservation

(McFarlane and Boxall, 2000; Trakolis, 2001; Dolisca et al, 2007). Apart from forest management aspects, people’s perceptions of conservation issues are likely to be influenced by an array of socio-economic, demographic, resource endowment and institutional factors (Hill, 1998; Mehta and Kellert, 1998; Gillingham and Lee, 1999;

Racevskis and Lupi, 2006). Gaining an understanding how the forest-adjacent communities perceive natural resource management authorities and factors that condition their perception is crucial for designing targeted policy measures to address people’s aspirations in conservation. From the foregoing research problem, the next section highlights the contribution that this study hopes to make to conservation policy debate.