Relationship Between Environmental Conservation Initiatives And Household’s Livelihood: A Case Of Community In Suba Subcounty - Homa-bay County

Abstract

Environmental degradation and destruction is a rising concern both locally and globally. This is in view of the role of the environment on earth’s biogeochemical systems and a source of essential ecosystem services to human wellbeing as well as its role in controlling the green house gas effects. It is based on this argument that the study aimed at establishing the relationship between environmental conservation initiatives and household’s livelihood in Suba Sub-County, Homa-Bay County. Previous studies indicated that very little or no attention had been focused on the relationship between environmental conservation initiatives and livelihoods of the rural community. Research objectives included: to determine the relationship between promoting Agroforestry as an environmental conservation initiative and Livelihood, to establish the relationship between environmental education program as an environmental conservation initiative and livelihood, to establish the relationship between environmental research and technology as an environmental conservation initiative and livelihood of the community in Suba Sub-County, to determine the relationship between promoting ecotourism as an environmental conservation initiative and livelihood of the community in Suba Sub-County and to establish the relationship between the combined environmental conservation initiatives and livelihood of the community in Suba Sub-County. The study adopted descriptive survey design where both quantitative and qualitative data were collected using questionnaires from a total of 375 adult respondents representing randomly selected households. Random sampling in this case took the multi-stage random sampling process to be able to identify the actual study area. Quantitative data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics where Pearson-Product Moment Correlation and regression modeling were applied to be able to establish the level of relationships between environmental conservation initiatives and the livelihood of the community in Suba Sub- County. Hypotheses of the study were tested using Chi-Square P-value. Inferential statistics were applied purposefully to enable generalization of the results from the sample to the population. The study established that there was a significant relationship between; promoting agro-forestry and household livelihood with a correlation coefficient of 0.106, environmental education program and household livelihood with a correlation coefficient of 0.270 and environmental research and technology and household livelihood with a correlation coefficient of 0.161. Researcher therefore concluded that there was a significant but weak relationship between environmental conservation initiatives and household livelihood as the correlation coefficient tended towards 0.00. This study recommends increased efforts on extension services, adjustments in approaches applied to environmental education among the local communities and extensive mobilization and guidance of the community based on best researched technology applications. This study suggests that further studies can be conducted to investigate opportunities and potentiality of ecotourism, impact of agro-forestry on livelihood and level of adoption of indigenous trees species in farms among community in Suba Sub-County.