Analysis of costs and people's willingness to enroll in forest rehabilitation in Gorno Badakhshan, Tajikistan ☆ Bunafsha Mislimshoeva a, ⁎, Cyrus Samimi b , Joachim-F. Kirchhoff c , Thomas Koellner a a University of Bayreuth, Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Geosciences, Professorship of Ecological Services, Germany b University of Vienna, Department of Geography and Regional Research, Austria c Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, Tajikistan abstract article info Article history: Received 27 March 2012 Received in revised form 4 December 2012 Accepted 4 December 2012 Available online 27 December 2012 Keywords: Theory of planned behavior Willingness to enroll Saving book approach Reforestation costs ‘Ability’ factor Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, an energy crisis in Tajikistan led to extensive deforestation. Initial financial investment is necessary for the reforestation of the severely degraded areas. In such areas, the State Forest Agency, with the support of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), began to test the Saving Book Approach (SBA) in Gorno Badakhshan region. SBA is a specific scheme of Payments for Ecosystem Ser- vices reforestation scheme. Local people participating in SBA receive compensation for six years, if the work- load is fulfilled. This research has been carried out in order to analyze people's willingness to enroll in SBA and the suitability of certain forest plots for SBA implementation. The empirical results show that out of the factors tested —‘benefit expectations’, ‘social pressure’, ‘age’, ‘income’ and ‘ability’, ‘ability’ was the only influential factor for willingness to enroll. ‘Ability’ is defined as the labor force availability, physical abil- ity and amount of available time of the labor force in the household. The suitability of the forest plot depends on the needed investments for reforestation activities. Indeed, the willingness to enroll in SBA of local people does not necessarily match with plot suitability. These findings contribute to the improvement of the deter- mination and understanding of factors that influence local peoples' decision to enroll and thus, provide the international development community with useful information for the design of future payment schemes. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Historical records confirm that about one hundred years ago, forests covered approximately 25% of the area of today's Tajikistan. During the Soviet Union, forested land throughout Tajikistan was cleared in order to make more land available for cotton production. One notable exam- ple was the Tugai 1 forests (Kirchhoff, 2010). According to the Global Forest Resources Assessment (2010) forests currently cover more than 3% of the territory of Tajikistan (410,000 ha). Other recently conducted field based estimates suggest that due to the ongoing human induced degradation process currently even less than 2% of the territory of Tajikistan can be classified as covered by forests (Kirchhoff, 2010). In Gorno Badakhshan, a region located in the eastern part of Tajikistan, the state officially classifies 78,490 ha as forest land. However, only 10,130 ha are actually covered by forest (SFA, 2010). Yet, even these small areas covered by forests are threatened by human activities. The main reasons for the current forest degradation can be summarized as follows (Kirchhoff, 2009, 2010): a) the energy crisis, occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union forces the local population and state institutions to use fuel wood for heating and cooking, b) the lack of fodder livestock leads to use forests as pasture resulting destruction of juvenile growth, c) the small budget and insuf- ficient manpower restrict the State Forest Agency (SFA) to fulfill its monitoring and protection obligations, d) the lack of machinery for maintaining the irrigation system leads to a collapse of the channels and ditches, which are used to irrigate some forests. For the protection and rehabilitation of the forests of Gorno Badakhshan, the SFA, which is the responsible organization for the management of the state's forests, is collaborating with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. 2 In 2006 the SFA and GIZ began implementing the Joint Forest Management Forest Policy and Economics 37 (2013) 75–83 ☆ This article belongs to the Special Issue: Payments for Ecosystem Services and Their In- stitutional Dimensions: Institutional frameworks and governance structures of PES schemes. ⁎ Corresponding author at: University of Bayreuth, Faculty of Biology, Chemistry and Geosciences, Professorship of Ecological Services, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany. Tel.: +49 15252467985; fax: +49 921 55 2334. E-mail address: bunafsha.mislimshoeva@uni-bayreuth.de (B. Mislimshoeva). 1 Tugai forests (also known as riparian forests or floodplain forests) are formed in the floodplains of the river banks in higher elevations from 1500 masl to about 3000 masl. They consist of the following main species: Salix turanica, Salix shugnanica, Salix wilhelmsiana, Salix alba, Populus pyramydalis and Populus pamirica and Hippophae rhamnoides (Novikov and Safarov, 2000; Akhmadov, 2008; Kirchhoff, 2010). 2 German Agency for International Cooperation. 1389-9341/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2012.12.001 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Forest Policy and Economics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/forpol