A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Natural Resources Management, School of Environment, Resources and Development

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2006

Community-based forestry management for improvement livelihood of local people had been working in Sangthong Di"strict, Vientiane municipality nearly one decade. Since 1998, the community based forestry management had been implemented in Napor and Naboua village. The community forestry programs has encourages local people participated in forest resources management, especially, participation on decision making, forest planning, monitoring, evaluation and implementation. Therefore, some part of study provides the comparison between village community implementation and non-village implementation Naboua and Vangma village. This study aims to identify the contribution of community forestry management to livelihood improvement of local people in study areas. The contribution of community forestry was evaluated in term of forest products supply and available in household to fulfill their needs, infrastructures development, and people participation including look at CF has provided workload to local people and increased their household income. The main objectives were to reviews key forest policies development and role of planning that had been effected to local people in term of local people collects a resources for livelihood; to identifies the capacity of local people contributed to participation on decision making, managed, reserve, protection and conservation their resources, and to examined the conflict management and find out solution; to study livelihood of local people who was heavy depended on forest products for survives and economic development activities in community. Based on this research, the findings grant to provide a feedback to forest planning, policy making implementation and community development for livelihood of local people. The research study was based on both qualitative and quantitative information, during household survey; observation; key information; group discussion with villagers, community staff and village forest volunteers. Secondary data was collected from books record from forest department, district agriculture and forest office, faculty of forestry and relevant information in the library. The research outcomes, it is show both negative and positive effected. The positive effected, since CBFM implementation had been contributed benefits to local people and socioeconomic development. Encouraging local people participation and movement forward to reserve resource and manage their resources. The negative effected, policies strategy development and forest planning zone were make some farmers displace and move to new land, reduces agriculture and cropland, limited access to forests and income of household The CF have a great significant contributed to develops public facilities such as road, school building, water system and sanitations. Overall, community forestry had been set up community arrangement, income generation, and bought a seeds of participation to local people