The Impact of Area Closures on the Adoption of Livestock Manure as Energy Source: Evidence from Tigrai Region, Northern Ethiopia

Abstract

Natural forests have played vital roles in the provision of a wide range of benefits for the people living around them. The establishment of area closures could help to protect the communal natural resources on one hand, and it might impact the adoption of the traditional rural energy sources. While area closures have been studied globally in different themes, there is a lack of focused research on how area closures affect the adoption of dung cakes as an energy source, and the existing literature has not sufficiently addressed their impact on the rural households in the Tigrai Region. Exploring how area closures impact the adoption of livestock manure as an energy source can offer solutions for enhancing energy access, thereby improving efficient energy consumption, which was lacking due to area closures for local communities. So, this study is intended to examine the impact of area closure on the adoption of livestock manure as an energy source. A cross-sectional household survey of randomly selected respondents was conducted to generate data for the study. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, and Propensity Score Matching methods. The result of this study revealed that households residing near area closures had utilized a smaller (671.6 kg to 746.2 kg) amount of livestock manure than those located farther away from the closures as their energy source. This implies that the presence of area closures had a negative impact on households’ livestock manure adoption. This study therefore recommended that the concerned parties like environmental protection agencies, rural development and agricultural extension office, renewable energy companies should provide better extensions to rural households, especially in rural areas which had been unable to achieve a balance between area closures and use of dung cakes as organic fertilizers in lieu of using for energy purposes