The influence of forest proximity to harvesting and use of provisioning ecosystem services from tree species in traditional agroforestry landscapes

ABSTRACT Traditional agroforestry landscapes play a critical role in conserving biodiversity and sustaining rural livelihoods through multiple products and services. However, an unprecedented rise in the unsustainable utilisation and management of provisioning ecosystem services from these landscapes contributes to forest biodiversity loss and impacts livelihood efforts. The objective was to evaluate the link between distance and socio-ecological determinants and the provisioning ecosystem services consumption behaviour. This study tested whether “rural people’s preferences and extent of PESs harvesting decrease as the distance from the village to forest patches increase, regardless of the prevalent socio-ecological conditions’. Using a structured questionnaire survey, data were collected in 882 households in four villages of Thulamela Municipality, Limpopo Province in South Africa. The data were analysed using Chi-square, Fidelity level, Use-value, Friedman test, and Generalised linear model. Consistent with the hypothesis, the results showed that local people harvest most of the provisioning ecosystem services at an immediate (1st) level, followed by intermediate (2nd) and far distance (3rd) levels. This study further revealed the existence of 108 useful tree species in the study areas. This study also found that although socio-ecological determinants influence consumption behaviour, the influence of specific socio-ecological determinants was not consistent across the different regimes of distance from the forest resources. The fact that there is a preference to use and harvest provisioning ecosystem services from the distance regime closest to the household, shows a concerted effort to conserve and enhance the abundance of multipurpose tree species in homesteads and the immediate areas.