Traditional rural livelihoods and environmental degradation among forest-edge communities in Kenema District, Sierra Leone: Implications for sustainable rural development

Rural households living along forest frontiers depend on land, forests, water and wildlife for food, energy, income and other everyday needs. In Sierra Leone, this dependence is particularly visible around the Gola Rainforest landscape, where subsistence agriculture remains the foundation of livelihood for most forest-edge communities. Yet the same livelihood systems that sustain households can place pressure on forest and soil resources when farming expands, fallow periods shorten, wood extraction intensifies or households have few viable income alternatives. This article develops an empirical framework for examining the relationship between traditional rural livelihoods and environmental degradation among forest-edge communities in Kenema District. Drawing on the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework and a political-ecology perspective, the study treats environmental degradation as a multidimensional process involving forest-cover loss, declining forest quality, soil erosion and fertility decline, biodiversity loss, water degradation and habitat disturbance. A mixed-methods cross-sectional design is proposed, combining a household survey with key-informant interviews, focus-group discussions, field observation and, where technically feasible, geospatial analysis of land-cover change. The analytical strategy will examine not only whether particular livelihood activities are associated with environmental pressure, but also how poverty, household assets, education, market access, land availability and local institutions shape resource dependence. The article argues that conservation policy should avoid treating forest-edge households simply as agents of degradation. A more useful approach is to understand environmental pressure as part of a livelihood-environment feedback process in which economic vulnerability can increase dependence on natural capital, while degradation of that capital can deepen future vulnerability. The proposed study is expected to generate locally grounded evidence for rural-development strategies that combine sustainable agriculture, agroforestry, livelihood diversification, community-based resource governance and environmental stewardship.