Association between Poor Forest Governance and Illegal Timber Trade Activities in Malakand Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan
Association between Poor Forest Governance and Illegal Timber Trade Activities in Malakand Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan
Taimoor Khalid*, Asad Ullah and Mussawar Shah
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this research study is to find association or links between poor forest governance and illegality . The research area comprised three union councils i.e. Pir Khail, Agra and Totai of Tehsil Batkhela, District Malakand, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. A sample size of 357 respondents was proportionally allocated to the mentioned three union councils of the study area and selected by simple random sampling technique. Perception of the respondents regarding illegality in forest management (independent variable) and forest governance (dependent variable) were measured on three level likert scale. Chi-square test was applied to test the association between the study variables. The results show that poor forest governance had highly significant association with people cut trees by legal permits (P=0.000), due to illegal forest use the environmental services are greatly reduced (P=0.000), people are illegally occupying forest land (P=0.000), implementation of forest law is not same for all (P=0.000), timber permits are issued illegally to rich and powerful (P=0.000), due to illegality in forest management the forest management is not sustainable (P=0.000) and forest are cut without permission (P=0.000). Bringing forest department out of political influence and fair implementation of rule of law were the main study recommendations.
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December 2019
Vol. 35, Iss. 4, Pages 1020-1356
