Valuing ecosystem services in Sudan: a participatory study of the Okalma reserved forest

Gum arabic forests in Sudan are significant and biodiverse habitats, providing various ecosystem services (ES) that support both rural livelihoods and the national economy. However, effectively protecting and managing these forests is challenging, as the government's primary objective of producing gum for export often conflicts with local communities' reliance on forests for other ES. In this study, we explored the valuation of ES in the Okalma Reserved Forest using a participatory approach. We surveyed 150 households in two villages bordering the Okalma buffer zone at varying distances from the forest. Participants valued 12 different forest ES based on their perceived contribution to livelihoods, using a scale from zero to five. We employed descriptive statistics, feature selection, and Generalized Linear Models (GLM) to analyze the data and explore the impact of socioeconomic factors on ES valuation by community members. Our results indicate that regulating ES received the highest values, followed by provisioning and cultural ES. Despite its national economic importance, gum arabic was assigned a lower local value than other ES, highlighting a conflict between state and community priorities. However, people with forest-based livelihoods, diversified livelihoods, and those in distant villages assigned the highest value to gum arabic. For other ES, we observed distinct patterns: households with forest-based livelihoods and those relying on motorbikes or traditional carts for access assigned higher-than-average values to combined and provisioning services. Regulating ES were highly valued by individuals with a single livelihood source, and even more so by those with diversified livelihoods. For cultural ES, respondents with forest-based livelihoods and any formal education showed significantly higher valuation than those with no education. Finally, men valued tangible ES significantly less than women, a pattern that was particularly clear for wood ES. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that ES valuation depends on the specific ES type, forest users’ characteristics, and forest governance context. Moreover, they provide empirical insights for global commodity–oriented forest management in Sudan and Africa, highlighting the need to balance export-driven production with local livelihoods and biodiversity conservation and restoration.