Do livelihood strategies affect the willingness to participate in land conservation? The case of landless people in rural Tigray

ABSTRACT

Communal land-based resources are an essential source of livelihood in the rural economy of Ethiopia. In particular, the dependence of the landless people on the direct use of communal natural resources for their livelihoods jeopardizes both the resources they depend on and economic opportunities. To overcome such challenges, conservation of communal natural resources through collective action while addressing the food security problem has been described as one of the most appropriate resource management approaches. Thus, this paper explores how the livelihood strategies of landless people influence their willingness to participate in the conservation of natural resources. The study was conducted in five administrative districts in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. The findings of this paper are based on the cross-sectional data collected through structured questionnaires from 324 randomly selected landless households. This study extends the previous analyses by introducing a new method of analytical tool, particularly in modeling rural people’s willingness to participate in conservation. The results of ordered probit regression show that a higher level of willingness to conserve natural resources is observed if the household has access to farmland and harness resources generated in protected lands but with no access to artisanal mining and quarries. The study hence concludes that granting landless rural people access to farming activities and allowing them to reap economic benefits generated in protected lands promotes their participation in the conservation of natural resources.

KEYWORDS:

• landless people
• livelihood strategies
• conservation
• natural resources
• Tigray

1. Introduction

Conservation of communal natural resources through collective action has been described as one of the most appropriate and successful resource management approaches (Poteete & Ostrom, 2004; Ravnborg et al., 2000). Mainly, conservation decisions that aim to take advantage of collective actions have been regarded as strategies for achieving sustainable livelihoods that help reduce rural poverty (Doswald et al., 2014; Etsay et al., 2019; Guillén & Pavolini, 2015). However, the public good nature of communal natural resources is often inhabited by a group of farmers with a joint resource use right. This requires appropriate policies that encourage both private and collective efforts and investments to improve the cooperative behavior of farmers for the conservation and sustained use of communal natural resources (Oniki et al., 2020). In many developing countries, the direct extraction of communal natural resources serves as an important source of livelihoods (Gebreegziabher et al., 2012; Ratner, 2011; Swinton & Gebremedhin, 2003). Rural people reap a significant income from the direct utilization of natural resources such as forests, pastures and various minerals apart from farming activities (Vedeld et al., 2004). It is reasonable to argue that these livelihood benefits would no longer remain sustainable unless the beneficiaries actively participate in the conservation of communal lands (Andrew & Singh, 2018). Among numerous pathways, land conservation could be instrumental in achieving the universal Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of ‘zero hunger’ and ‘no poverty’ by 2030.

However, the fact that natural resources are increasingly being degraded in Africa, particularly in Ethiopia and the presence of poor land rental market and land scarcity contribute to the establishment of inadequate livelihoods for the landless rural people (World Bank, 2021). These challenges drive landless rural people to consider the direct use of environmental resources as a means of making their living, particularly the youth in many African countries (Meaza et al., 2016; Tilahun & Holden, 2023). Such short-sighted economic uses of natural resources further expedite land degradation, deforestation and desertification (Wassie, 2020). Many of the land-based natural resources belong to common and open-access property regimes (Heltberg, 2002) and are seen as alternative sources of income by landless rural people. The resources are either open for everyone to use or collectively managed and used by members of a given community. In connection to this, the free-riding problem is cited to be among the critical challenges to conserving such resources (Hirshleifer & Rasmusen, 1992) since it speeds up resource overutilization and the consequent degradation. To overcome the stated challenges, the conservation of communal natural resources such as forestlands, grazing lands and other communal lands requires the involvement of local communities. In this regard, various studies show that the presence of poorly defined property rights, competing interests among resource users, weak institutions and local bylaws and uneven distribution of benefits hinder the participation of rural people in the conservation of communal natural resources (Bezu & Holden, 2014; Chunga et al., 2023).

As part of the national policy, the Government of Ethiopia along with the development partners and consortium of donors has intensified the implementation of several communal natural resources conservation interventions in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia in the past three decades (Haile et al., 2006; Mitiku et al., 2006). The conservation initiatives are mostly implemented by the mobilization of the communities (supply unpaid labor for communal land conservation) while some other conservation programs are funded programs through Food for Work (FFW). Particularly, the FFW programs have been funded by government agencies and various international and local NGOs whereby different implementation approaches were deployed (Haile et al. 2006). In addition to FFW programs, an incentive scheme has been in place to instigate communities to participate in the conservation of natural resources that includes the provision of tree seedlings at minimal prices for private use and free of charge to plant on communal lands (Oniki et al., 2022). There has also been a shift in the implementation of watershed development programs in the country towards a more comprehensive approach to integrating both resource conservation and rural livelihood development. The communal natural resources conservation program adopted ‘community-based participatory watershed development’ as its main guiding principle (Desta et al., 2005) with two core objectives; conserve natural resources and create economic opportunities for the poor people, particularly the landless and other disadvantaged people.

Much of the previous research related to the conservation of communal natural resources in the Tigray region have focused on how conservation initiative improve bio-physical resources such as forest cover, groundwater availability, and contribute to the restoration of degraded landscapes (e.g. Adimassu et al., 2012; Amsalu & De Graaff, 2007; Bekele & Drake, 2003). As regards to socio-economic aspects of conservation initiatives, Tesfay (2006); Gebregziabher et al. (2016); Belachew et al. (2020); and Etsay et al. (2022) documented that the conservation practices on communal lands have generated a lot of livelihood opportunities such as livestock feed, bee forage, and woodlots. Some other evidence reveals economic incentives have played crucial roles in promoting the participation of the community in natural resource management and conservation (Armitage, 2005; Gebremedhin, 2004; Kellert et al., 2000; Negash et al., 2022; Oniki et al., 2023). The economic incentives include funded conservation projects, the provision of farm tools as a reward for participation in conservation and an increase in crop production because of conservation works of upper catchments. Likewise, the landless people reap some economic benefits (such as trees, feed for livestock and spices) from conserved lands via communal land distribution in many parts of Tigray region (Meaza et al., 2016; Negash et al., 2020).

As indicated above, while there is a considerable volume of literature that deals with the nexus between the conservation of natural resources and the livelihoods of the people in Tigray, much of it describes only the bio-physical benefits of the conservation programs, the socio-economic drivers of land degradation and focused on the returns on private land conservation-related investments. Despite their important insights, the role of livelihood strategies on the willingness of participation of the landless people in the conservation of communal land resources remains overlooked as this segment of communities is believed to be disadvantaged people and has conflicting interests in the use of communal natural resources. Thus, our study bridges this gap as it deals with how livelihood strategies and socio-economic factors influence landless rural households’ decision to participate in collective actions to conserve communal lands.

2. Methods

2.1. Study area, sampling framework and survey design

The survey data used in this study was gathered from five administrative districts (locally known as woreda) in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia between May and July 2020. Tigray region was used as a case for this study because of its extreme exposure to a shortage of agricultural lands with a large number of landless people and its dryness upon which fragile agricultural farming systems have widely been taking place. Tigray region is characterized by various agroecological zones, rugged mountains and degraded valleys. This has left the region with prolonged deforestation, constant erosion and run-off water during rainy seasons. In addition, farmers in the region have a wide range of experiences in applying several conservation measures and maintaining a variety of benefits through their conservation initiatives. The farming system dominantly depends on erratic rainfall and subsistence-based mixed farming systems across all the study districts. The farming system is characterized by a subsistence safety net and is dominated by five major staple cereal crops. It includes sorghum, wheat, barley, teff, maize and pulses (Taffesse et al., 2012). The crop production is also supplemented by the livestock sector. The study districts appear to have small per-capita holdings of land and cattle. Overall, the production system of both crop and livestock is characterized by low input and low output. This indicates that the farming system has remained very traditional and subsistence.

This study has gone through multiple stages to reach out to the respondents. In the first stage, all districts in the Tigray region were stratified based on their respective agro-ecological zones. Accordingly, five administrative districts were randomly selected that represent the diversity in agro-ecological zones and livelihood opportunities (Table 1). The selected study districts¹ include Enda-Mekoni, Raya-Azebo, Hawzen, Mereb-Leke and Asgede-Tsimbla (Figure 1). In the second stage, two village administrations (also locally known as tabia) from each study district were purposively selected, resulting in a total of 10 study villages. The selected village administrations were based on the proximity to the nearby town which is also the capital of the district to capture the variation in economic opportunities within districts. Accordingly, the nearest to and the most distant from each district’s capital were purposely chosen.

Figure 1. Map of study districts in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia.

Table 1. Distribution of sample households and study sites

Study districts	Study villages	Sample	Agro-ecological zone
Enda-Mekoni	Mekan	36	Highland
	Jemma	36
Hawzen	Siluh	38	Midland
	Degamba	37
Asgede-Tsimbla	Mizan	35	Midland
	Hitsats	36
Raya-Azebo	Tsigi’a	25	Lowland
	Kara	12
Mereb-Leke	May-Weyni	33	Lowland
	Atsgeba	36
Total		324

Before the main data collection, we conducted a preliminary test to validate the applicability of the questionnaire and this was followed by training of enumerators. On top of that, an exploratory survey was undertaken to get preliminary information regarding the livelihood sources of landless people and farmers’ involvement in the conservation of communal lands. Based on such preliminary data, we organized the sampling frame which is the list of landless farmers who make their livings via various means (farming through sharecropping or renting or gift, off-farm and non-farm livelihood activities) and permanently lived in their respective villages. This was helpful for our sampling because it retained reliable information from those people who regularly participated in communal land conservation. Afterward, a sampling frame was produced where we listed out all the landless villagers in all selected villages and drew simple random sampling using a standardized random sampling generating system. Accordingly, a total of 324 landless households were randomly selected and participated in the household survey (Table 1). The heads of selected households participated in the survey. The lists of respondents (sampling frame) were obtained from their respective village administrations. The number of respondents drawn from each district was in proportion to its share of the total target population.

Before starting the survey, respondents were verbally asked for their consent to participate and obtained informed consent from the participants. A structured questionnaire was used to gather the required data to address the objective of the study. The questionnaire was particularly designed to elicit data on landless households’ livelihood strategies, asset holdings (human capital, physical capital, natural capital, social capital and financial capital), participation in the conservation of communal lands, benefits from conserved communal lands and other socio-demographic backgrounds of the households.

2.2. Analytical model specifications

2.2.1. Ordered probit model

Smallholder farmers in the Tigray region of Ethiopia have long been undertaking multiple conservation actions to improve their agricultural yields and restore degraded communal lands. Among multiple alleviating measures, soil and water conservation structures (bunds, terraces and trenches) and tree plantations have been taking place over diverse communal lands. Given this, the current study relied on households’ explicit choices to freely supply their labor for the number of man-days to carry out various conservation structures on communal lands in addition to the mandatory 20 man-days every year already set by the government. The Tigray regional government mobilizes an unpaid labor force for the conservation of natural resources at the household level in which any capable persons who are 18 years old and above in each rural household are mandated to participate. Therefore, it is assumed that the already established 20 man-days free labor contribution does not reflect the choice made by farmers as all eligible persons in the rural areas are obliged to do so, and any refusal to comply with the 20 man-days free labor contribution generates suit consequences and legal penalty.

The current study assumed that allowing rural households to express his/her opinions regarding their extent of willingness to participate in the conservation of natural resources on an ordinal scale could indicate their explicit decision to freely participate and such decision is not influenced by pressure from the government, peers, and the community. Considering the nature of levels of decisions on communal land conservation measures, each household was asked to choose his/her willingness to supply unpaid labor force in communal land conservation measures either for no more man-day, for 5 more man-days, or for 10 more man-days on top of the mandatory 20 man-days of free labor contribution set by the government. The minimum decision to work for no more man-day = 1, the medium decision to work for up to 5 more man-days = 2, and the maximum decision to work for up to 10 more man-days = 3). In distinguishing the decision of villagers toward the conservation of communal lands, the respondents stated their views based on the Likert Scale of three ordinal nominal values ranging from 1 to 3 as described above to capture their opinion on the extent of participation in conservation for extra man-days of the labor force in addition to the already established mandatory conservation work.

Based on Maddala (1989) and Greene (2000), the ordered probit model is appropriate to handle choice measurements of the monotonic ordering of qualitative answers.

(1) $y^{\ast }=\beta x^{\prime }+\epsilon$(1)

Where $y^{\ast }$ signifies the household’s latent (unobservable) decision to choose the number of man-days to supply for conserving communal lands, $x^{\prime }$ represents a vector of explanatory variables thought to determine the household’s decision, ‘β’ is a vector of parameters showing the association between decision to participate in conservation and independent variables in $x^{\prime }$, and ɛ is an independently and identically distributed error term with mean zero and variance one. If households’ decision to conserve communal land $y^{\ast }$ falls within a certain range, an observable level signified by $y_i$ takes a representative value that indicates the category in which the unobserved decision lies. Hence, the conservation decision $y_i$ constituted values 1 (low level of participation), 2 (modest participation) and 3 (higher level of participation) mathematically shows the relationship between $y^{\ast }$ and $y_i$ is given in equation 2.

The lists of explanatory variables included in the ordered probit regression were selected based on previous literature and the researcher’s experience and the dependent variable is the extent of participation in the conservation of communal resources on an ordinal scale. The specific explanatory variables used in the regression along with their operational definition and summary statistics are presented in Table 1.

Given $y_i$= (1, 2, & 3) for (low participation, modest participation, and high participation, respectively)

Interval decision rule

(2) $\begin{array}{rl}& y_i=1if{y}_i^{\ast }\le u_1\\ & y_i=2if{u}_1<y_i^{\ast }\le u_2\\ & y_i=3if{u}_2<y_i^{\ast }\le u_3\end{array}$(2)

When looking at probit models, it is presumed that $y_i^{\ast }$ is a function of observed and unobserved variables

(3) $y_i^{\ast }={\beta }_0+x_{1i}{\beta }_1+x_{2i}{\beta }_2+\dots x_{ki}{\beta }_k+{\epsilon }_i\text{break}{y}_i^{\ast }=x_i\beta +{\epsilon }_i$(3)

The threshold values ($u_1$,$u_2$ and$u_3$) are unknown. Given the outliers, $Pr\left(y_i=1\right)$ and $Pr\left(y_i=3\right)$, the probability of a household’s decision to conserve communal land can be shown in equation 4:

(4) $\begin{array}{rl}& Pr\left(y_i=1\right)=1-\mathrm{\Phi }\left[x_i\beta -u_1\right]\\ & Pr\left(y_i=2\right)=\mathrm{\Phi }\left[x_i\beta -u_1\right]-\mathrm{\Phi }\left[x_i\beta -u_2\right]\\ & Pr\left(y_i=3\right)=\mathrm{\Phi }\left[x_i\beta -u_2\right]-\mathrm{\Phi }\left[x_i\beta -u_3\right]\end{array}$(4)

Where F(Φ) represents a cumulative density function (CDF), which measures the probability of a household’s conservation decision being less than the respective threshold level. The empirical question is the CDF one ought to choose If F(Φ) is the standard normal density, the resulting probability model is the ordered probit (Maddala, 1989).

2.3. Description of variables and summary statistics

The explanatory variables included in the empirical model were adopted following the previous similar studies and researchers’ experience. The list of explanatory variables included in the ordered probit model is presented in Table 2. The dependent variable is households’ extent of willingness to participate in the conservation of communal natural resources which has an ordinal scale.

Table 2. Description of variables and summary statistics

Variable	Description and specification	Mean	Standard deviation
Dependent variable
Willingness of participation in conservation	The extent of willingness of participation of the household in unpaid soil and water conservation activities (1= low, 2= medium, 3= high)	1.82	0.86
Explanatory variables
Gender	Gender of the household head (female =1, male =0)	0.26	0.44
Age	Age of the household head in years	33.7	8.37
Educ	Educational attainment of the household head (years of schooling)	4.7	3.87
Irrigation	Household’s access to irrigation (Yes=1, No=0)	0.21	0.4
labor_force	Number of labor force in the household (age between 15–64 years)	2	0.89
Training	Any member of the household received training in any of the livelihood strategies(Yes=1, No=0)	0.18	0.39
Livestock	Heads of livestock owned by the household in TLU^2	1.79	1.83
Hillside	Any member of the household benefited from communal land distribution (Yes=1, No=0)	0.13	0.34
Land_access	Access to farmland through share-cropping or rent or gift (Yes=1, No=0)	0.71	0.45
Access_protected	Household collects any economic benefits from protected communal lands (Yes=1, No=0)	0.18	0.38
Accessother_nr	Availability and access to natural resources mining such as stone, sand and gold (Yes=1, No=0)	0.59	0.49
Distance_mkt	Distance to nearest town/city in walking minutes	67.87	66.67
Distance_road	Distance to all weathered road in walking minutes	50.76	63.28
Org_member	Membership in any of farm-related cooperatives or informal institutions (Yes=1, No=0)	0.53	0.49
Credit_access	Access to credit services from financial institutions (Yes=1, No=0)	0.49	0.5
Incom_diversity^3	The livelihood diversity index, computed using Simpson’s index (SID).	0.32	0.2

Table 2 presents both statistical descriptions and operational definitions of each variable that is used in the econometric analysis. The sample of respondents was composed of males (74.5 %.) and females (25.5%). The sample households had a mean age of 33.7 years. The average educational attainment is about 4.7 years and 18% of total respondents received training to enhance their skills and knowledge regarding livelihood strategies. Of the total sample households, 13% have benefited from communal land distribution; 71% of them have access to land through sharecropping, rental, or other land contracting arrangements; 59% have access to mine natural resources such as stone and sand quarry and artisanal gold mining; and about 18% have collected benefits from protected lands such as the collection of fuel wood, livestock fodder, bee forage and construction materials. Similarly, 53% of the respondents are members of the community organizations (cooperatives and/or local informal institutions), and 49% have received credit from financial institutions in the past 5 years. The livelihood diversity index is found to be on average 0.38 which is by far below the average compared to 1 which indicates complete diversification. This shows that the survey participants were found to have less diversified income sources. According to Simpson’s diversity index, the livelihood diversity index ranges between 0 and 1; a larger index (values approach one) implies more diversified income sources, while a low diversity index (values approach zero) implies specialization in a single income source.

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Livelihood strategies and willingness to participate in conservation

Following past studies (Alobo, 2012; Berjan et al., 2013; Johny et al., 2017), we classified livelihood activities into on-farm income sources (comprising of crop and livestock productions), off-farm income sources (which include earnings from wages for agricultural employments, rent from oxen and animal cart and other incomes from farm-related employments and physical assets) and non-farm activities (which includes earnings from artisanal mining and quarry, petty trade and shops, handicrafts, construction works, remittance and aid).

The results in Table 3 show that the major livelihood strategy that the landless people employed to make their living was on-farm income followed by non-farm and off-farm income-generating activities, respectively. Even though the respondents are landless, their main source of income highly depends on farm-related income sources through land contracts and livestock production. The land contracts in the study districts include sharecropping, renting, and gifts. The landless people engage in sharecropping (sharing the harvest based on an agreed ratio), renting cropland (paying cash for a stated production season), and a gift from relatives. Furthermore, the landless households in Raya-Azebo and Mereb-Leke districts were found to earn more income from the on-farm activities compared to the other study areas whereby each household earned on average 22,523.4 ETB/year and 15,780.05 ETB/year, respectively (Table 3). This may happen mainly because both districts are lowlands and reported to be among the areas characterized by the availability of large tracts of farmlands suitable for both crop and livestock production (Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia CSA, 2013). Table 3 also shows that the landless people in these districts received significantly higher annual total income compared to that of respondents from other districts signaling better natural resource endowments. On top of this, landless households from Raya-Azebo and received greater income from non-farm income sources compared to other study areas. The possible reason could be due to the fact that the presence of large-scale agricultural investments and the associated job opportunities. Similarly, the Asgede-Tsimbla district is reported to be among the mineral-rich places (particularly gold), hence landless people may have considered artisanal mining of gold as an additional income-generating strategy.

Table 3. Average annual earnings of respondents in the 2019/20 production year in ETB⁴ (values in the parenthesis are standard deviation)

Study districts	Mean of on-farm income	Mean of off-farm income	Mean of non-farm income	Mean of total income	Livelihood diversity index
Enda-Mekoni	11012.6 (14058.6)	3404.3 (3651)	7909.7 (12226.8)	22326.7(18581.7)	0.39
Raya-Azebo	22523.4 (25979)	4663.6 (4923.3)	13485.4 (15971.6)	40672.5 (28579.03)	0.36
Hawzen	9767.5 (14302.5)	5175 (6545.6)	9327.8 (11525.5)	24270.4(18788.9)	0.34
Mereb-Leke	15780.05(23823.4)	4923.1 (5308)	6618.9 (8993.2)	27322.1(23308.9)	0.37
Asgede-Tsimbla	10789.4 (10080.4)	1818 (2476.7)	10479 (12598.7)	23086.7(17030.5)	0.43

In general, these results give the impression that although the respondents are landless; their major source of income highly relies on the agriculture sector. Furthermore, the extent of livelihood diversification in all districts is observed to be low as the diversity index ranges between 0.34 and 0.43. This implies that landless people are vulnerable to the adverse impacts of any possible shocks and uncertainties on their livelihood sources since the extent of income diversification is generally low.

Table 4 also shows that there is a positive and significant correlation between on-farm income and the probability of a higher level of willingness to participate. Contrary to this, a negative relationship between non-farm income and the probability of a higher level of willingness to participate is observed. As indicated above, the main share of income for landless people is farming. Households who engage in farming also tend to participate in the conservation of communal natural resources while those whose income relies on non-farm activities are less interested in participating in conservation. It is, however, important to note that a robust regression is important to understand the relationship between livelihood strategies and participation in conservation. The next section looks into it in more detail.

Table 4. Correlation between livelihood strategies and probability of participation in conservation (values in parenthesis are p-value)

Livelihood strategy	Extent of participation in the conservation of natural resources
	Low level of participation Pr(y=1/x)	Modest participation Pr(y=2/x)	Higher level of Participation Pr(y=3/x)
Income from on-farm activities	−0.167 (0.07)*	0.03 (0.54)	0.173 (0.001)***
Income from off-farm activities	−0.069(0.21)	0.065(0.23)	0.059(0.28)
Income from non-farm activities	0.054(0.33)	−0.048(0.38)	−0.046(0.4)

*&*** indicates results significant at 0.1 & 0.01 significance level, respectively.

3.2. Factors affecting landless households’ participation in the conservation of natural resources

The key assumption that needs to be tested concerning ordinal probit regression is the proportional odds assumption (Maddala, 1989). For this purpose, we adopted the likelihood-ratio (LR) test of proportionality of odds across response categories to test whether or not the assumption is violated. A significant test statistic of the LR-test provides evidence that the proportional odds assumption (also known as parallel regression assumption) is violated and vice versa. As indicated in Table 4, the result of the Brant test and LR test confirms that the proportional odds assumption is not violated as the Prob > chi-square for both tests is not significant which indicates that the model is appropriate for the data. The overall model test (F-test) is highly significant which also confirms that our data fit for the model.

The regression result of the ordered probit model is presented in Table 5. Among the included variables education, access to other natural resources, access to the market and extent of income diversification seem to have a negative and statistically supported effect on the households’ willingness to participate in unpaid soil and water conservation activities as the coefficients of these variables carried a negative sign. On the other hand, the coefficients of training, access to farmland, access to protected lands and membership in community organizations were found to carry a positive sign and also statistically significant. The coefficients of the ordered probit model differ by a scale factor; hence, we cannot interpret the magnitude but the sign of the coefficients. We need to have marginal effects computed after ordered probit regression. Table 5 thus presents the marginal effects of the factors determining the extent of participation of households in unpaid labor service for the soil and water conservation of communal lands. The following sections deal with the interpretation of the magnitude of the marginal effects of the ordered probit regression.

Table 5. Ordered probit regression results

Explanatory variables	Coefficient of parameters	Marginal effects of parameters
		Pr(y=1/x)	Pr(y=2/x)	Pr(y=3/x)
Gender	0.051(0.181)	−0.02	0.003	0.017
Age	−0.002 (0.010)	0.0008	−0.0001	−0.0007
Education	−0.033 (0.020)*	0.013*	−0.002	−0.011*
Irrigation_access	−0.228 (0.185)	0.09	−0.018	−0.071
Labor_force	0.006 (0.101)	−0.0025	0.0004	0.002
Training	0.748 (0.166)***	−0.285***	0.014	0.267***
Hillside	0.148 (0.209)	−0.058	0.008	0.050
Livestock	−0.071 (0.046)	0.028	−0.004	−0.023
Land_access	0.552 (0.180)***	−0.217***	0.047**	0.17***
Access_protected	0.568 (0.183)***	−0.216***	0.012	0.203***
Accessother_nr	−0.316 (0.147)**	0.124**	−0.019**	−0.105**
Market	−0.002 (0.001)**	0.001**	−0.0001*	−0.009**
Road	0.0001 (0.001)	−0.000	0.000	0.00004
Org_member	0.393 (0.150)***	−0.155***	0.027**	0.128***
Credit_access	−0.002 (0.146)	0.001	−0.0001	−0.0008
Incom_diversity	−0.931 (0.395)**	0.37**	−0.063	−0.306**
Overall model diagnosis
Model summary	Prob > chi2 = 0.0000		Pseudo R^2 = 0.1183
Brant test of parallel regression assumption	Prob> chi2= 0.11		Number of observations = 324

*, **, & *** represents results significant at 0.1, 0.05 & 0.01 significance level, respectively.

3.2.1. Literacy of the household head

An additional year of education of a household head is associated with being 1.3% more likely to be in the lower level of willingness to participate, 0.2% less likely to be in the modest willingness of participation and 1.1% less likely to be in the higher willingness of participation. The results were significant at the 0.1 significance level. These findings show that households that are better educated are less willing to participate in the conservation of hillsides and other communal natural resources. The possible explanation for such a relationship is that education may increase the awareness of exit options of community members and thus tend to undermine collective actions to conserve communal resources. More educated people may have also higher opportunity costs for their time, so they may be less willing to participate in conservation activities. Parallel to this finding, a study by Pender et al. (2001) described that a low level of investments in terraces was highly associated with better-educated people.

3.2.2. Participation in training

The study finds that households who got training in livelihood improvement options and related topics have exhibited a higher probability of being in the higher willingness of participation status. As presented in Table 5, the probability of being in the lower and modest level of participation decreases by 28.1% and 1.3%, respectively, for trained households (p < 0.01), while the probability of being in the higher willingness to participate increases by 26.7% (p < 0.01). The possible reason for such an association may arise because individuals who attended training regarding livelihood improvement strategies may have a better chance to enlarge their frontier of knowledge about economic returns of conservation and hence would be more willing to supply free labor for the conservation initiatives. Besides, capacity-building schemes such as training and seminars may have enabled farmers to have a better perception and knowledge about the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. This is consistent with studies conducted in other regions of Ethiopia by Mengstie (2009); Moges and Taye (2017); Assefa et al. (2018) who revealed that training has a positive effect on improving farmers’ participation in the conservation of communal land resources. A similar study conducted by Bijani et al. (2017) reported that capacity building is a key factor that positively affects farmers’ participation in communal land conservation initiatives which also supports our finding.

3.2.3. Access to farmland

Access to farmland is found to be an important factor in determining the extent of the willingness of participation of landless households in collective actions to conserve natural resources. Households that have access to farmland (in the form of sharecropping or renting or gift) are found to be more willing to contribute unpaid labor service to conserve communal natural resources than other households. As indicated in Table 4, households who have access to farmland are associated with being 21.7% less likely to be in a lower level of participation (p < 0.01), 4.7% more likely to be in the modest (p < 0.05) and 17% more likely to be in a higher level of participation (p < 0.01). To support farmers’ livelihood, there exist constitutional rights that ensure access to farmland for all Ethiopian citizens who want to live in rural areas and engage in agriculture. Contrary to this constitutional right, however, many people in rural households are landless because of scarcity. As an option, landless people attempt to engage in crop production through sharecropping, renting and gifts from relatives. In this regard, our result indicates that individuals who operate a piece of farmland, in the form of shared or rented in or other forms of land contracts, show higher interest in participating in the free labor contribution to conserve communal lands. The positive association between access to farmland and higher participation in conservation may happen because of two possible factors. The first possible reason is that households that are more willing to spend their labor force on conservation activities may have associated with the consequent improvements in crop productivity. The second reason could be that the landless households may consider such participation in the conservation activities as a confidence-building measure so that the local authority will grant them entitlement to farmlands whenever there is a partial land re-distribution program or hillside distribution. Agidew and Singh (2018) find a positive relationship between farming activities and participation decisions in the conservation of watersheds which reinforces the findings of our study.

3.2.4. Access to protected lands

Access to protected lands/ex-closures was also found to be instrumental in determining landless households’ level of willingness to participate in the conservation initiatives. The likelihood of being in the lower level of participation decreases by 21.6% for households who collect benefits from conserved communal lands (p < 0.01) and increases the probability of being in the higher willingness of participation by 20.3% (p < 0.01). The implication of this is that granting landless people access to harness some economic benefits from protected lands stimulates their cooperative behavior to conserve communal natural resources. The members of a community in a given conserved/protected watershed are allowed to collect dry and fallen branches of trees for fuel wood. Additionally, they are given access to wood removed during thinning/pruning operations and are also permitted to gather animal fodder (hay), thatch and other benefits based on the local bylaws on benefit sharing.

The notable direct benefits listed by the respondents were the collection of wood fuels, livestock fodder (hay), bee forage and construction material (thatch). A study by Tesfaye et al. (2014) revealed similar results in which households who obtained benefits from communal forests were in favor of the conservation of additional communal lands in the Bale highlands of southern Ethiopia. Contrary to this, however, Etsay et al. (2022) finds that households that own beehive (the protected lands serve as a source of bee forage) are less likely to participate in the conservation of communal lands. Such an unexpected relationship may arise in case there are free riders who want to harness the benefits without contributing to the conservation of communal resources. There is a high probability to become a free rider, particularly those households who own beehives since it is difficult and practically impossible to exclude the bees from extracting forage from the nearby communal protected lands. In aggregate, however, our study confirms that allowing the landless people to harness the economic benefits generated as a result of conservation may induce them to attach more value to the resource and contribute more to the conservation of the communal natural resources.

3.2.5. Availability and access to natural resource mining

Concerning access to other natural resources, it shows compelling statistical support in determining the willingness to participate in conservation. The probability of a household being in the lower willingness of participation increases by 12.4% for those who have access to artisanal mining of gold or quarry of stone and sand resources (p < 0.01), whereas the likelihood of households being in the modest and higher level of willingness of participation decreases by 1.9% (p < 0.05) and 10.5% (p < 0.01), respectively. In other words, landless households who have access to harness minerals and other natural resources (artisanal mining and/or quarry sites) in their locality show less interest in participating in the conservation of communal lands. The possible explanation for such a relationship could probably arise because the livelihood of such households is not relatively dependent merely on farming and hence attaches less value to the conservation initiatives aiming at enhancing farm productivity. Likewise, such behavior of individuals may occur as they are less dependent on a single livelihood source and are also less embedded in agriculture. It has been practically observed during the field survey that quarry sites for the collection of stone and sand (for construction purposes) and artisanal mining of gold is a contributing factor to the prevailing land degradation problems, particularly soil erosion. Miners are not interested in participating in reclamation efforts of abandoned and degraded mining sites. Thus, artisanal mining is reported to have a significant contribution to land degradation (Funoh, 2014) and deforestation (Macháček, 2019) in many African countries, all of which are parallel to our finding.

3.2.6. Proximity to markets

Distance to the nearest market was also found to be an important factor in determining the willingness to participate in conservation activities. As indicated in Table 5, one unit increase in distance to the market center is associated with being 0.1% more likely to be in the lower level of participation (p < 0.05), 0.01% less likely to be in the modest level of participation (p < 0.1) and 0.9% less likely to be in the higher level of participation (p < 0.05). The findings show that the proximity to the market center negatively affects the level of participation in conservation. Households that are located in nearby places to the market centers (most often towns) tend to show less interest in participating in conservation activities partly due to the presence of better economic opportunities. Rural households that reside around towns are mostly less dependent on agriculture including farming but rely on non-farm livelihood strategies such as trade, construction works and other income-generating activities. Similar results have been reported by Ostrom (1990) and Swallow and Bromley (1995) who revealed that isolated communities are more likely to be successful in the conservation and management of communal natural resources.

3.2.7. Membership in community organizations

As presented in Table 5, membership in community-level organizations shows a significant effect on the households’ participation in conservation activities. The likelihood of being in the lower willingness to participate decreases by 15.5% for households that are a member of cooperatives and other community organizations (p < 0.01). The probability of being in the modest and highest willingness to participate increases by 2.7% (p < 0.05) and 12.8% (p < 0.01), respectively, for the households that are a member of cooperatives and other community organizations. In general, landless households that are a member of a community organization are more willing to contribute unpaid labor service to conserve hillsides and other communal natural resources. The effect of being a member of community organizations (such as cooperatives, edir and equb)⁵ on the participation in natural resource conservation may be explained by the fact that such exposure could broaden farmers’ knowledge and awareness about the long-term consequences of natural resource degradation. Furthermore, as farmers belong to associations they learn from others, and especially the influential individuals within their group. Similar results have been reported whereby community and customary bylaws are crucial for the success of conservation efforts of hillsides in Ethiopia (Nedessa et al., 2005) and in other countries (Acharya, 2005).

3.2.8. The extent of livelihood diversification

Households with a higher extent of income diversification are generally found to be less willing to contribute unpaid labor to the conservation of communal lands. As shown in Table 5, the probability of being in the lower willingness to participate increases by 37% for every unit increase in the extent of the income diversification index (p < 0.05). The regression result also shows that a unit increase in the income diversification index of households is associated with being 6.3% less likely to be in a modest level of participation and 30.6% less likely to be in a higher level of willingness to participate. The results were significant at the 0.05 significance level.

The model regression results are substantiated using Figure 2. It illustrates the nexus between the share of the three major sources of income and the level of willingness to participate in conservation works of the landless people. It shows that landless people with more diversified income sources are associated with a low willingness to contribute unpaid labor force to conservation activities since the three livelihood options are observed to have a significant share of the total income (Figure 2). Likewise, higher willingness to supply unpaid labor force was observed among households with less diversified income sources as their total income is dominated by a single livelihood source, on-farm income which represents for nearly 50% of the total income.

Figure 2. Livelihood diversification and willingness to participate in conservation.

The negative association between the extent of income diversification and willingness to participate in conservation may appear to exist because of two possible factors. Firstly, the fact that those households with more diversified income are believed to be relatively less dependent on a single livelihood strategy (often farm income in rural areas) and hence may show less interest in participating in the conservation of resources. The second reason is that households that receive their income from diversified sources do mean that they are less dependent on the extraction of natural resources. The lower level of dependency on agriculture and other natural resources may contribute to the low level of willingness to participate in conservation.

Various studies in this regard reported mixed results though it favors the negative association between livelihood diversification and the extent of participation in conservation. For instance, in favor of our result, a study conducted in Ethiopian highlands confirm that by found evidence that having greater livelihood diversification could prompt households not to participate more in the conservation of communal lands (Holden et al., 2004;Teshager et al) (Teshager Abeje et al., 2019). Contrary to our results, a study conducted by Illukpitiya and Yanagida (2008) in Sri Lanka depicts that households with greater income diversity are found to be more willing to participate in the conservation of natural resources.

However, it is worthwhile to mention that the data used for the analysis of this paper were collected just a few months before the war in Tigray⁶ broke out in November 2020. The two-year war in the Tigray region of Ethiopia inflicted a devastating impact on rural households; it caused deliberate destruction of public infrastructures, crops, private holdings, forests and other livelihood sources since settlements and farmlands were battlefields in many fronts over the course of the war (Abay et al., 2022; Negash & Birhane, 2023; Nyssen & Naranjo, 2023). Thus, the socio-economic condition, livelihood sources and agricultural activities of survey participants are believed to be significantly affected by the war. Nonetheless, the findings of this research could serve as a benchmark for the future planning of post-war recovery and reconstruction plans particularly for the landless people in the rural areas.

4. Conclusion and implications

This study explores the role of the livelihood strategies of landless households on their willingness to participate in the conservation of natural resources since many landless people relied on the direct mining of scarce resources and reaping the benefits from communal forests mainly in the form of firewood and charcoal. This has been practically observed in the areas where landless people have been depending on the available natural resources to supplement their means of living. Our study examines how the livelihood strategies of landless people and their socio-economic conditions affect the degree of participation in the conservation of communal natural resources based on cross-sectional data collected from the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

The results of descriptive statistics show that even though the respondents are landless, on-farm income constitutes the highest share of the total earnings via engaging in land contracts and livestock production. Likewise, a strong positive correlation was observed between the share of on-farm income and willingness to participate in conservation works. This finding signals that landless households who engage in farming activities are more willing to participate in the conservation of communal natural resources, possibly due to the consequent improvements in crop and livestock productivity.

The result of ordered probit regression reveals that a higher level of willingness to participate in conserving natural resources is observed if the household has access to farming activities and harnesses resources generated in protected lands but with no/limited access to artisanal mining and quarry sites. The result further confirms that landless households are more likely to participate in conservation given that they are a member of community organizations, located at distant places from the market center and have less diversified income sources.

In general, the current study shows that many of the factors that are found to be instrumental in determining the decision of landless people to contribute unpaid labor force to conserve natural resources are confined to access to economic opportunities and farming activities suggesting a strong link between the livelihood strategies and conservation decision of land-based natural resources. More importantly, granting land access and improving land markets for farming purposes (such as sharecropping and rent) could help to establish a meaningful livelihood and instigate landless people to participate in the conservation of natural resources. This in turn could ultimately help to achieve some of the SDGs such as fighting poverty and hunger via conserving natural resources for future use. Access to such economic opportunities and natural resources can be directly affected by the change in government policies and programs. Therefore, the results presented here suggest the need for strengthening policies that promote access to farming, reaping resources generated in protected lands and capacity building to encourage intrinsically motivated participation in the conservation of natural resources among the landless people.

Authors’ contribution

Study design: HE, AK, SK & MB

Data collection and management: HE, AK & SK

Data analysis and development manuscript: HE

Revision and approval of the final version of the manuscript: HE, AK, SK & MB

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Mekelle University for funding the costs of the survey. We are very thankful to the field assistants and respondents who shared their time and provided us with the required data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The raw data that supports the findings of this study can be made available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

The authors have not received any funds for publication

Notes

1. The administrative boundaries and nomenclatures of districts in the Tigray region have been changed since the survey was carried out in 2020; however, our map uses the pre-2020 boundaries and nomenclature.

2. TLU represents the Tropical Livestock Unit, which uses 250 kg of live weight to estimate the entire herd of each livestock species. Accordingly, camel = 1.1 TLU, cow = 0.8 TLU, ox = 0.8 TLU, donkey = 0.5 TLU, goat or sheep = 0.1 TLU, poultry = 0.01 (Njuki et al., 2011)

3. SID is computed from the share of the three main livelihood activities (on-farm, off-farm and non-farm income sources) from the total income. See for instance Nagendra (2002) & Teshager Abeje et al. (2019) for the details on how to compute the livelihood diversity index.

4. ETB (Ethiopian birr) is the currency of Ethiopia. 1 ETB was equivalent to USD 0.0254 as of August 2020.

5. In Ethiopia, edir and ekub are among the indigenous social capitals that may allow a community to impose social norms on individual behavior. edir is mainly associated with funerals, and ekub is a rotating saving and credit association.

6. A full-scale war between Tigray and Federal forces (including its allies from the Amhara region and neighboring Eritrean) broke out in November 2020. The two-year war complemented by a complete siege has had a devastating impact on agriculture and the environment apart from the unspeakable humanitarian tolls (hundreds of thousands of casualties, millions of internally displaced people and thousands of victims of sexual violence) (Aster & Emiru, 2023; Nyssen & Naranjo, 2023).