Community Participation In Afforestation Projects

Project approaches to development remain a vital instrument by development agencies to reach and assist poor communities in the developing world. Development interventions in the past have tended to focus on resource and knowledge transfer to beneficiary communities through the ‘top-down’ approach. However, several decades of development funding have demonstrated the failures of the ‘top-down’ approaches to reach and benefit the rural poor. A possible reason for these failures is attributed to the lack of local community participation in identification, planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of development projects. Past studies indicate that limited data on community participation in afforestation projects constitutes a major constraint to rural development, frequently, leading to incorrect assessment of the development needs of rural people. This book therefore provides an insight into community participation in the project cycle management of afforestation activities with River Nyando basin as case study. The basin continues to suffer from environmental degradation, despite having one of the highest concentration of NGOs involved in environmental conservation.