A hidden harvest from semi-arid forests: landscape-level livelihood contributions in Zagros, Iran

ABSTRACT

In a forest-scarce country like Iran, the open semi-arid Zagros forests are the single-most important forest region, yet their contribution to rural livelihoods remains inadequately understood. Here our primary focus is on analyzing the quantitative contributions of these oak-pistachio tree savannas to rural household incomes in Malekshahi County, Ilam Province, considering both cash and subsistence sources, and direct as well as indirect incomes. Direct forest-extractive incomes prove to be comparatively small (6% of household incomes), and are dominated by foods (wild vegetables, pistachios, and fruits), fuels, and livestock feeds. However, forest incomes are egalitarian in distribution, and strategic in their nature: they keep one-fifth of households from falling below the poverty line. The poorest are thus also more forest- and firewood-reliant, but more surprisingly, so are specialized pastoralists. Moreover, indirect benefits in terms of forest inputs into agriculture are crucial: 20–25% of the crops are planted in tree savannas generating 7–9% of household incomes. All forests support goat and sheep grazing in the dry season as a vital refuge of vegetation resources, likely with an even higher value of household income (around 10%). Future research should look closer into those forest-farm linkages.

KEYWORDS:

• Indirect incomes
• NTFP
• livestock
• household economy
• grazing
• Ilam

Acknowledgments

Part of this research was supported by University of Ilam, University of Freiburg, the German Academic Exchange Services (DAAD), DFID-KnowFor, and the CGIAR’s Forest, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) programme. We thank our colleagues Dr. Marc Hanewinkel and Dr. Rasoul Yousefpour from University of Freiburg who provided some comments for improving the paper.

Notes

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