Mapping the Power Web Behind an Ethiopian Forest: Who Really Governs Gargeda?

In the highland forests of western Ethiopia, the fate of a single tract of woodland now rests on something far less visible than trees: a web of relationships between government offices, non-governmental organizations, and village-level social groups. A new study published in Environmental Management has, for the first time, mapped that web in detail for the Gargeda State Forest, and the picture it reveals is one that conservation scientists will recognize from many corners of the world. Formal state institutions dominate the governance network, local communities hold a smaller share of the connections than their daily dependence on the forest would suggest, and the entire structure depends heavily on a handful of central actors. The research, led by Zelalem Telila of Dambi Dollo University and Jimma University together with co-authors Abayine Amare and Teferi Tolera, offers a rare quantitative portrait of how collaborative forest governance actually works on the ground in a part of Africa where deforestation pressures and institutional fragility intersect.

The team approached the question not by asking who holds legal authority on paper, but by tracing who actually talks to whom, cooperates with whom, and depends on whom. Using social network analysis, a method borrowed from sociology that treats organizations and groups as nodes and their working relationships as edges, the researchers constructed a map of stakeholder interaction in and around Gargeda State Forest. The resulting network contains 27 nodes and 55 edges, a moderately sparse structure with a network density of 0.156. In practical terms, that density figure means only about sixteen percent of all possible relationships among the actors actually exist. For a forest whose survival depends on coordinated action, the authors argue, that sparseness is itself a finding: many stakeholders who could be cooperating simply are not.

The composition of the network is where the power imbalance becomes stark. Government institutions account for 66.7 percent of all nodes, meaning two out of every three actors in the governance system are state bodies. These institutions drive policy formulation, control resource allocation, and dominate decision-making. Local social groups, the people who live closest to the forest and interact with it daily, make up just 18.5 percent of the network, contributing primarily through community-based management activities. Non-governmental organizations occupy the remaining 14.8 percent, and the study characterizes their role as intermediaries, bridging grassroots actors and policymakers. This distribution echoes a long-running debate in environmental governance scholarship, rooted in Elinor Ostrom’s foundational work on governing the commons, about whether top-down state control or polycentric, community-anchored arrangements deliver better outcomes for shared natural resources.

But counting nodes only tells part of the story. The researchers also analyzed the strength of each relationship, classifying the 55 edges into four tiers. Moderate ties, rendered in pink in the network visualization, constitute 57.9 percent of all connections with a weight of 2, and the study describes them as the operational backbone of the governance system, the everyday working relationships that keep routine management functioning. Strong ties, shown in green, represent 13.8 percent of edges with a weight of 3, indicating substantial cooperation between the actors involved. Weak ties, in purple, account for 12.8 percent with a weight of 1, and these are the connections the authors flag as requiring reinforcement, relationships that exist nominally but carry little collaborative substance. At the top of the scale, the strongest ties, shown in blue, make up 15.5 percent of edges with a weight of 4, reflecting deeply integrated partnerships and shared leadership.

That tiered structure carries a diagnostic message. A healthy collaborative governance network, according to much of the literature the study draws upon, needs a solid core of strong, trust-based relationships surrounded by enough moderate and weak ties to circulate information and bring new actors into the conversation. Gargeda’s network has the right shape in one sense, since the majority of its ties are operational rather than superficial, but the relatively small proportion of deeply integrated partnerships suggests that genuine power-sharing and joint leadership remain the exception rather than the rule. Where the strongest ties do exist, they represent exactly the kind of shared decision-making that collaborative forest management frameworks aspire to, and the study treats them as a model for what the rest of the network could become.

The analysis was carried out with Gephi 0.10.1, an open-source network visualization and analysis platform widely used across the social sciences. Mapping the network in this way does more than produce an attractive diagram; it allows researchers to identify which actors sit at structural bottlenecks, which connections are fragile, and where a single failure could fragment the whole system. In Gargeda, the visualization made one vulnerability especially visible: over-reliance on central actors, with REDD+, the international framework for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, singled out as a hub whose outsized position creates risk. If a central node weakens or withdraws, the actors connected only through it can lose their channels of coordination entirely, a phenomenon network scientists call structural vulnerability.

The study also documents the practical frictions that constrain effective governance in the region. Inadequate infrastructure limits the ability of institutions and communities to meet, monitor, and enforce management plans across the forest landscape. Political instability disrupts the continuity that long-term forest management requires, since programs and personnel can be interrupted by shifts in the wider governance environment. These logistical challenges are not unique to Gargeda; comparative studies from Ghana, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Tanzania cited in the research describe similar patterns in which well-designed collaborative frameworks stall against the realities of underfunding, weak local capacity, and shifting political priorities. What the Ethiopian case adds is a precise, quantitative measure of how those pressures translate into the architecture of the stakeholder network itself.

The authors’ recommendations follow directly from the network evidence. They call for integrating traditional and formal governance systems, a theme that resonates with recent research on the Ethiopian-Kenyan borderlands showing that customary and state institutions can complement rather than compete with each other in environmental resource management. They advocate enhancing decentralized leadership so that decision-making authority is not concentrated in distant government offices, and strengthening stakeholder collaboration to raise the network’s density and deepen its weakest ties. Inclusive decision-making, infrastructure development, and capacity building are identified as the three levers most likely to produce a more sustainable and equitable governance model for the protected natural forest. Each recommendation targets a specific structural weakness the analysis exposed: low density, thin community representation, and fragile dependence on central hubs.

Why should readers far from western Ethiopia care about a 27-node network in one state forest? Because the Gargeda study demonstrates a method that can be applied anywhere contested natural resources are managed by many hands. Climate change is raising the stakes for forest governance worldwide, with research showing growing risks to forests from warming temperatures and mounting pressure on tropical forest nations to deliver both conservation and development. Whether collaborative governance succeeds in places like Gargeda will help determine whether forests continue to store carbon, shelter biodiversity, and sustain rural livelihoods. By converting the messy reality of stakeholder politics into measurable structure, density, tie strength, and centrality, the study gives practitioners a tool for diagnosing governance failures before they become ecological ones. The trees of Gargeda State Forest, in other words, are being governed by a network, and for the first time that network has been made visible, measured, and opened to deliberate redesign.

Subject of Research: Collaborative forest governance and stakeholder network analysis in Gargeda State Forest, western Ethiopia

Article Title: Institutional Arrangements and Collaborative Forest Governance in Gargeda State Forest, Western Ethiopia

Article References: Telila, Z., Amare, A., & Tolera, T. (2026). Institutional Arrangements and Collaborative Forest Governance in Gargeda State Forest, Western Ethiopia. Environmental Management, 76(10), Article 334. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-026-02641-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s00267-026-02641-8

Keywords: forest governance, social network analysis, Ethiopia, collaborative management, REDD+, stakeholder collaboration, community-based forest management, institutional arrangements, Environmental Management, deforestation, Gephi, natural resource governance