Community perceptions and governance of tree planting schemes in Ethiopia: Insights for sustainable ecological and socioeconomic outcomes

Historically, tree planting was primarily implemented to achieve economic functions; more recently, environmental and social goals have also been emphasised. This is due to the realisation that schemes operate in a socioecological system; hence, understanding and fulfilling local social (community) interests is imperative.
We conducted 13 focus group discussions and 40 interviews with communities at 13 Ethiopian tree planting scheme sites to evaluate their perceptions of the landscape challenges, scheme governance processes, and to identify areas for improvement. We analysed the survey responses qualitatively and scored the level of community satisfaction with the governance of each scheme.
The results indicated that the communities understood and felt the impact of the landscape challenges while being optimistic about tree planting schemes' potential to avert these issues. However, the communities differed markedly in their satisfaction with the scheme's governance, indicating that the..., Case study selection and engagement with community representatives
In identifying relevant tree planting schemes, we noted no consolidated register of schemes in Ethiopia, nor do all schemes appear in scientific literature. Therefore, we used various methods, including checking organisational websites, networks and Google search engines to identify (donor and implementer) scheme websites. We also conducted informal consultations to identify suitable schemes by visiting various organisations (including the government Forestry Commission, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, and the Ethiopian Civil Society Coordination Office), networking events, and offices of programs that coordinate and implement tree planting schemes across Ethiopia. In these visits, we collected data about the schemes and their activities, details about their donors, partners, location of implementation, and their overseeing organisations. The selection of the schemes was based on their (1) inclusion of ..., , # Community perceptions and governance of tree planting schemes in Ethiopia: Insights for sustainable ecological and socioeconomic outcomes

We have submitted our raw data (Tree_Planting_Schemes_Context_and_Community_Perception_data.csv)

## Description of the data structure in the .CSV file

### Files and variables

###### File: Tree\_Planting\_Schemes\_Context\_and\_Community\_Perception\_data.csv

##### Variables: The file contains Columns A to BU, where the first raw is the 'Column Headings' for each column describing what the raw variables stand for, while Columns B to BU represent the variables for the 'numbered schemes' in Column (A). The variable 'NA' stands for ‘Not Available’ wherever we couldn’t access data  

| Column A to BU  | Column Headings | Description of column contents ...,