Estimating the cost of forestry incentive programs in order to improve forest traditional management (A case study of northern Zagros forest, Baneh, Kurdistan province)

Traditional forest management in northern Zagros is quite old and has been able to meet the needs of local people. Lack of productive and arable lands and consequently, unemployment and poverty have made people to overexploit the nature specially forest lands. Severe intervention of people in traditional forest management creates some conflicts between people and forest management organizations. Development and evaluation of forestry incentive program can be appropriate way for improvement of forest management in these areas. This study was performed in three forest villages, Kochar, Belakeh, Kandesoureh, in Armardeh, Baneh, Kurdestan province. In order to evaluate incentive programs to improve traditional forest management, data obtained from a survey of local communities and qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect data. In this research 276 households in three villages were studied and 76 questionnaires were completed by household’s holder in the quantitative analysis. Economic analyses of forest and communities relationships showed that livelihood of rural households in the study area is based on two main activities (traditional animal husbandry and agriculture) and furthermore, it shows that animal husbandry has the most dependency on forests. Results showed that people with the profession of animal husbandry have the most conflicts with the government. A systematic approach was used to design incentive programs in the study area to determine driving forces, pressure, state, impacts and response (solutions). Also evaluation of local community benefits from forest, in order to clarify financial value of incentive programs was done. Result of financial evaluation indicated that for preventing pollarding and firewood collection as main reasons of forest degradation, 500 $ per year for each family as incentive programs in 2010 were needed.