Contribution Of Forest Provisioning Ecosystem Services To Livelihoods Of Smallholder Farmers Adjacent Chyulu Hills Forest

ABSTRACT

Forests are believed to play critical ecological, social, cultural, and economic role to

the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Kenya and even all over the world. Forestry

Provisioning Ecosystem Services (FPES) contribute significantly to smallholder

farmers‘ livelihoods though this contribution is sometimes not accounted for.

Understanding the role played by FPES to the livelihood of smallscale farmers is

crucial for sustainable management of the forest resources. This study therefore

sought to investigate the contribution of FPES to the livelihoods of smallholder

farmers adjacent Chyulu hills forest, Makueni County. The specific study objectives

were to; (i) Identify the type of FPES provided by Chyulu hills forest to the adjacent

communities (ii) Evaluate the contribution of FPES to the household income of

smallholder farmers adjacent Chyulu hills forest and (iii) Assess factors influencing

utilization of the Chyulu hills FPES. A survey research design was used. Stratified

and purposive sampling methods were used to select the specific study Sub-locations.

A sample size of 62 respondents was selected in the two Sub-locations using the

coefficient of variation method (Nassiuma, 2000). Frequency distribution was used to

determine the type of FPES extracted from Chyulu hills forest and the contribution of

FPES to the household income of smallscale farmers. Logit regression model was

used to analyze data on factors influencing utilization of the Chyulu hills forest. The

results established that farmers in both Sub-locations extracted FPES with the 37.5%

and 64.3% of the respondents in Mang‘elete and Kiu Sub-locations, respectively

extracting the services from the forest. The types of FPES extracted from Chyulu hills

forest were mainly food and medicinal plants. In Mang‘elete Sub-location, the most

extracted food material was vegetables (44.4%) while in Kiu Sub-location honey was

the most extracted at 87.5%. In Mang‘elete the most extracted herbal was Terminalia

brownie (52.4%) while in Kiu Sub-location the most extracted was Grewia bicolor

(60.9%). Results further showed that FPES contributed a substantial amount of money

to the income of the respondents with total mean income from FPES in the two Sublocations

being Ksh 811.36 (8.4%) while that from other sources such as farming

being Ksh 8,907.53 (91.6%). There was a significant difference between the monthly

mean incomes (Mang‘elete (M= 355.56, SD= 1,252.04) and Kiu (M= 1,267.17,

SD=3,085.60, t (58) = -2.26, p