Benefits Flow and Utilization of Kipkunur Forest Products by Upstream and Downstream Users, Elgeyo Marakwet County, Kenya

Abstract

Utilization of forests resources among economic units has remained partially noticed, yet, communities living adjacent to the forests and beyond are dependent directly or indirectly for their livelihood. Unaccounted benefit flow of a resource, leads to inappropriate policy formulation that undermines sustainability of such resource(s). Therefore, this study sought (i) to identify consumptive forests products by economic units, (ii) to estimate benefits flow of forests among economic units and (iii) to test relationship of socio economic variables that are associated with forest resource consumption among economic units. Two structured questionnaires were designed for upstream and downstream study areas. Systematic random sampling was used in administering 221 questionnaires for upstream and 231 for downstream respondents. Excel and Statistical Package for Social Sciences version-20 were used in analysing descriptive statistics. From the results, adjacent communities to the forest were found to derive more forest benefits than downstream study area. Identified forest products that were highly dependent by upstream forest users are water, fuel wood, wild fruits, wild vegetables, mushroom, pastures, herbs and honey, while for downstream users are water supply, honey and herbs. Again, results showed variation in consumption of forests commodities; where upstream were found to derive more benefits than downstream households. Further, climatic variation in terms of spatial and temporal scale, households’ demographic and socio economic characteristics were found to influence consumptiveness of forests resources. In conclusion, there exist variation in benefits derivation among in-situ and ex-situ consumers, which highlights the significance of formulating a paradigm conservation policy that reflects Kaldor-Hicks efficiency criterion. Presence of variables that was hard to interpret and/or those that remained untruly explained from the relationship tests, which formed part of limitation of this study, form the basis for further investigation