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 degree to which schemes met their goals was related to
the community's satisfactory engagement. Most respondents discussed
issues about proper community consultation, engagement,
institutionalisation, and capacity building, starting from the input phase
to the scheme governance process. We concluded that communities'
perceptions are valuable at all scheme phases and should be employed to
improve a scheme's governance, outputs, and impacts. We hope the
results will help to encourage local communities' participation in
steering and refining the governance of inclusive and appealing tree
planting schemes with sustainable ecological and socioeconomic outcomes.