Forest Governance at Village Level with Potential for REDD+ in Participatory Forest Management, Tanzania

This paper focus on improving forest governance through addressing gaps at grassroots village institutions implementing Participatory Forest Management (PFM), which is the platform for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) programme in Tanzania. The FAO/PROFOR framework model for Assessing and Monitoring Forest Governance was applied. It was found that governance status does not foretell REDD+ readiness. When villagers gauge the perceived state of governance on a Likert scale, governance status had a mean score of 1.79 out of 4 for the whole study community; indicating weak governance. Weak incentive among PFM stakeholders and poor resource capability of Village institutions were the main hindering factors. Gaps in policy, legal, institutional and regulatory frameworks found to be the underlie causes for the poor governance.