Local people's participation in Dong Na Tham Community Forest Management Project, Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand

The research aimed to assess the context, factors, extent, and outcomes of local people's participation in Dong Na Tham Community Forest Management (CFM) Project, Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand. It also determined the relationship and influence of the multi-level factors to the extent of people's participation, and of the extent of people's participation to the outcomes at the individual level. The study covered five villages of the Na Pho Klang Sub-district. Data were mainly gathered through personal interview of 347 respondents, by using an interview schedule and key informants' interview. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The local people in the project were mostly male, with mean age of 46.53 years, married, reached primary school, from households with 3-4 members, and were involved in one to two organizations. They had one to two income sources, with 30,065 and 34,028 Baht gross annual family income before and after the project, respectively. They had high attachment to the community and favorable attitude towards participation. The project staff tended to have coordinator, if not, driver style of management, and the level of project resource support was moderate. Most of them lived in the middle of the mountain, deemed their village leadership to be of fair quality, and viewed their community as highly cohesive. Most of the local people had been involved in the project for four to six years, participating mainly in training and advocacy as well as natural forest fire protection and control activities. Overall, they had moderate extent of participation in the project. The participation in the project brought high five dimensions of benefits to the people, recovery of 81 percent of forest, developed local leader potentials, and facilitated knowledge management. Based on the test of relationship, except of local people's gender and educational attainment, all the independent variables in the individual level were significantly related to the extent of people's participation. Management style and level of resource support were associated with but leadership quality and community cohesiveness were positively and significantly related to the five dimensions of participation outcomes. Using multiple regression analyses, organizational affiliation (1-2 organizations), attachment to the community, level of resource support, leadership quality, and cohesiveness influence local people's participation in the project. As to the problems faced, the most common were, no time to participate, limited resource, and meager and less transparency in village budgeting which they suggested to offer equal chance to all participants; provide adequate budget, equipment, training and personnel; and undertake fund sourcing and networking.