Access to benefits from forest commons in the Western Himalayas

Little statistical evidence exists on the effects of forest management regimes and wealth on forest access rates in South Asia. To determine the magnitude and significance of these effects, this paper analyzes a dataset of communities from Himachal Pradesh, India, with a fractional logit model. The investigation considers three specific forest management regimes including a regime under complete state control, traditional community regime and a co-management regime known as Joint Forest Management. Communities with higher incidence of land poverty have lower forest access rates for grazing and fodder extraction, whereas communities with a higher incidence of land-rich households have higher forest access rates for fodder extraction. Forest access rates for fuelwood collection are lower under traditional and co-management regimes. However, the interaction between land-poverty and co-management regime increases forest access rates for fodder collection and livestock grazing.     

不同生计策略类型对农户林种选择意愿的影响研究——基于福建省477户农户调查数据

研究以福建省为调研区域,数据来源于福建省集体林权制度改革监测调查。根据农户收入来源不同,将农户生计策略类型划分为纯林型、兼业型和非林型,通过构建多元无序Logit模型,实证分析不同生计策略类型对农户林种选择意愿的影响。结果表明:从纯林型向非林型转变时,呈现出家庭耕地面积、家庭林地块数、家庭林地面积、家庭林业生产经营支出、家庭林业收入逐渐减少的趋势和家庭非林生产经营支出、家庭非林收入逐渐增加的趋势。以农户种植竹林意愿为参照,与非林型相比,纯林型和兼业型对农户用材林和经济林选择意愿均具有显著正向作用,用材林选择意愿受户主年龄、是否签订林地承包合同的影响,经济林选择意愿受户主是否为村干部、是否有林权证、是否加入农民林业专业合作社、是否拿到过林业补贴、林业单位面积投入的影响。研究结论有助于农户根据不同生计策略选择不同林种,进而提升农户收入水平,缓解农户生计问题。     

Drivers of Forest Ecosystem Change in Purnapani Area: Empirical Evidence and Policy Suggestions

Purnapani area of Sundargarh district of Indian state of Odisha was primarily dominated by tribal people with natural forest ecosystems. The local tribal people were mostly depending upon forest and agriculture for their livelihood. During 1958 Purnapani Limestone and Dolomite Quarry (PL&DQ) started mining of lime stone and dolomite in the area. The total land contributed by Purnapani villagers for mining, township and railway line construction was 569.64 acres. In 2003, the mines were closed and about 2000 mine workers lost their livelihood. During the last 50–60 years, unsustainable mining activities and then their abandonment have degraded the forest ecosystem and livelihood resource base of local communities in the Purnapani area. Thus in order to identify the major drivers of degraded forest ecosystems we have conducted primary surveys in Purnapani area. Using regression analyses we find that both mining activities and passenger transport services are the drivers of population growth in Purnapani area. Livelihood of local tribal people is being positively impacted by mining activity and passenger transport services operating from Purnapani area. Fuel wood consumption increases over time due to population growth which put great pressure on forest ecosystems to change. Both mineral production and population size have impacted human well-being negatively by positively impacting health expenditure. The amount of decline of community welfare in terms of net present value derived by the communities from extraction of forest resources is due to mine spoiled degraded forest ecosystem services. From our analysis we recommend that large-scale ecological restoration is necessary to protect the environment and to restore the resilience of ecosystem services in this area.

     

Protecting Forests Through Farming. A Dynamic Model of Nontimber Forest Extraction

Forest resource extraction by local communities has been cited as a major impediment to the efficient management of protected forests. This paper develops a two sector dynamic model for farming and forest resource extraction by communities living in the forest periphery. The model assumes that land under forestry is constant and households allocate their time to farming and forestry. Comparative dynamic results suggest that higher prices for agriculture output, lower input prices, better knowledge of farming techniques and a lower discount rate may result in a higher equilibrium stock of forest resources. Tobit analysis with primary data collected from the Sinharaja forest in Sri Lanka provides supportive empirical evidence.     

Management of non-timber forestry products extraction: Local institutions, ecological knowledge and market structure in South-Eastern Zimbabwe

Common-pool resources (CPRs), such as forests, water resources and rangelands, provide a wide variety of economic benefits to forest-fringe dwellers in semi-arid areas of southern Africa. However, the public nature and competition involved in the use of these goods, and weak enforcement of institutional arrangements governing their use may lead to resource degradation. Using survey data from four communities in south-eastern Zimbabwe for 2008 and 2009, this paper examines the extent to which forest degradation is driven by existing common property management regimes resource and user characteristics, ecological knowledge and marketing structure. A Principal Component Analysis indicates that the existence of agreed-upon rules governing usage (including costs of usage), enforcement of these rules, sanctions for rule violations that are proportional to the severity of rule violation, social homogeneity, and strong beliefs in ancestral spirits were the most important attributes determining effectiveness of local institutions in the management of CPRs. Empirical results from a regression analysis showed that resource scarcity, market integration, and infrastructural development lead to greater resource degradation, while livestock income, high ecological knowledge, older households, and effective local institutional management of the commons reduce resource degradation. The results suggest that there is need for adaptive local management systems that enhance ecological knowledge of users and regulates market structure to favour long-term livelihood securities of these forest-fringe communities.     

Gender and forest conservation: The impact of women's participation in community forest governance

Would enhancing women's presence in community institutions of forest governance improve resource conservation and regeneration? This paper focuses on this little addressed question. Based on the author's primary data on communities managing their local forests in parts of India and Nepal, it statistically assesses whether the gender composition of a local forest management group affects forest conservation outcomes, after controlling for other characteristics of the management group, aspects of institutional functioning, forest and population characteristics, and related factors. It is found that groups with a high proportion of women in their executive committee (EC)—the principal decision-making body—show significantly greater improvements in forest condition in both regions. Moreover, groups with all-women ECs in the Nepal sample have better forest regeneration and canopy growth than other groups, despite receiving much smaller and more degraded forests. Older EC members, especially older women, also make a particular difference, as does employing a guard. The beneficial impact of women's presence on conservation outcomes is attributable especially to women's contributions to improved forest protection and rule compliance. More opportunity for women to use their knowledge of plant species and methods of product extraction, as well as greater cooperation among women, are also likely contributory factors.     

Impacts of the Productive Safety Net Program in Ethiopia on livestock and tree holdings of rural households

We evaluated the impacts of the Ethiopian Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) on rural households' holdings of livestock and forest assets/trees. We found no indication that participation in PSNP induces households to disinvest in livestock or trees. In fact, households that participated in the program increased the number of trees planted, but there was no increase in their livestock holdings. We found no strong evidence that the PSNP protects livestock in times of shock. Shocks appear to lead households to disinvest in livestock, but not in trees. Our results suggest that there is increased forestry activity as a result of PSNP, and that improved credit access encourages households to increase their livestock holdings.     

Profitability and social impacts of reduced impact logging in the Tapajós National Forest, Brazil — A case study

Brazil contains the world's largest tropical rainforests, most located in the Amazon River Basin. Over the last three decades, rapid growth of this region's deforested area has had negative impacts. To minimize these impacts and maintain biodiversity, the Brazilian Government has established several national forests in the Basin. The ITTO Project, a reduced impact logging (RIL) operation, was recently carried out at one of these forests: the Tapajós National Forest, also known as Flona Tapajós. This paper evaluates the Project's profitability and its effect on local residents. The Project, which ran between 1999 and 2003, was coordinated by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), with funding for planning and monitoring provided by the United Kingdom's Department of International Development (DFID) working through and approved by the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO). Treviso Agropecuária Ltda, a private logging company, carried out timber extraction on the Project site. Our evaluation found the ITTO Project to have been highly profitable for Treviso, even after their compliance with all Brazilian labor and environmental laws. This finding was based on field interviews and the examination of documents from IBAMA and Treviso. Treviso's mean internal rate of return from the Project was calculated to have been 35.79%, considerably higher than that generated by the region's farms and ranches. The ITTO Project positively impacted Project workers, providing employment and exposing them to rainforest management techniques that maximize timber production while minimizing forest destruction. The paper closes by suggesting that more of the direct and indirect benefits of new reduced impact logging projects on Brazilian national forest land need to be channeled to the local population to increase the probability of them act as capable forest custodians.     

Public Open Access and Private Timber Harvests: Theory and Application to the Effects of Trade Liberalization in Mexico

A common popular assertion is that trade liberalization encourages deforestation. But whether this is true depends on how trade policies affect the allocation of land among competing uses and how they influence illegal cutting of public forests. A model is presented that allows for forests to be either public or private, and public forests are divided into protected (or managed) and threatened categories. Effects of price changes are shown on each part of the forest. An empirical version of the model is applied to the case of Mexico with NAFTA. Most scenarios considered show that NAFTA will have positive long-run effects on forest cover in Mexico but that this is net of losses on private lands.     

The role of domestic timber markets in tropical deforestation and forest degradation in Ecuador: Implications for conservation planning and policy

Studies about the impact of the timber trade on tropical forests have often oversimplified process complexity and underestimated regional variability. This study shows that forest degradation and clearing in Northwest Ecuador between 1983 and 1992 was closely linked to commercial logging. A key finding is that domestic demand is critical for shaping timber extraction and, hence, forest degradation and deforestation in this region. Low timber prices for roundwood and sawnwood at the origin, which are bolstering unsustainable forest extraction, have not been affected by market liberalization. This suggests that conservation initiatives that target international trade linkages may only be partially successful, even when they do what they are intended to do. Results suggest that market-based incentives are more likely to produce the desired results if they target and support timber producers directly. These findings are also relevant for other regions where domestic markets are a significant drive for deforestation and where local markets are supplied through the activities of small-scale, labor-intensive primary producers. Also, by emphasizing areas where logging is a dominant force, meso-level studies, like this one, not only help to more accurately estimate the impact on local forests, but also identify major resource flows and the factors promoting or hindering sustainable use, and those affecting the effectiveness of policy options.     

Accounting for single and aggregated forest incomes: Application to public cork oak forests in Jerez (Spain) and Iteimia (Tunisia)

This study presents an applied improvement in the agroforestry accounting system (AAS) approach to two public cork oak forests in the Mediterranean region: Jerez (Spain) and Iteimia (Tunisia). Both forests have similar environments but differ in land property rights, labour markets and countries (developed and developing economy, respectively).The income analysis considers the differences between forest ownership, and household and landowner economic rationalities. In the case of Jerez, the public landowner has a right to exclude others from using the forest resources; community employment and natural resource conservation criteria determine Jerez's management. In the Iteimia case, the public landowner has regulated free-use rights for livestock grazing, firewood and crops so that local households can meet their needs and improve their income. Households operate by maximizing their income from the full employment of their own family workforce.The results show that Jerez's management generates negative commercial capital income for the public landowner, despite receiving significant public subsidies, while it maintains high internal forestry investment that generates additional local employment. Conversely, Iteimia produces positive commercial capital income for the public landowner and high household self-employed labour income per hectare.     

International trade and terrestrial open-access renewable resources in a small open economy

Abstract .  In this paper, I investigate the effects of trade liberalization and policies on deforestation by extending a small open economy model with open-access renewable resources developed by Brander and Taylor (1997a) . I endogenize the carrying capacity of the resource. I find, unlike Brander and Taylor, that trade liberalization may increase the forest stock in the resource-abundant country and may decrease the forest stock in the resource-scarce country. Moreover, the policies primarily aimed at protecting forests, such as import restrictions by importing countries and forest certification for well-managed forests, may have perverse effects on the forest stock.     

When a Good Business Model is Not Enough: Land Transactions and Gendered Livelihood Prospects in Rural Ghana

Recent large-scale commercial agriculture projects in developing countries have raised concerns about the effects on natural resource-based livelihood activities of local people. A significant weakness in the emerging literature is the lack of a gender perspective on implications for agrarian livelihoods. This article explores the gendered aspects of land transactions on livelihood prospects in the Northern Region of Ghana. Drawing on qualitative research from two commercial agriculture projects, the article examines how pre-existing gender inequalities in agrarian production systems, as well as gender biases in project design, are implicated in post-project livelihood activities. The article concludes that a good business model of a land deal, even one that includes local communities in production and profit sharing, is not sufficient to protect women's livelihood prospects if projects ignore pre-existing gender inequalities and biases, which limit access to opportunities.     

Valuing the non-timber forest products in the Mediterranean region

The potential of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) in the Mediterranean region as a source of livelihood and sustainable development has been widely recognized. Yet, surprisingly few efforts have been made to value them comprehensively. Valuation efforts usually focused on selected NTFPs traded on formal markets, at local level. This paper aims to provide comprehensive estimates of NTFPs benefits at national and regional level in the Mediterranean region. Six major groups of NTFPs are identified: firewood, cork, fodder, mushrooms, honey and other NTFPs. Valuation is based on a wide variety of techniques, drawing on official statistics, and supplemented by results of local surveys. It shows that at Mediterranean level, NTFPs provide annual benefits of about €39/ha of forests, accounting for about a fourth of the total economic value of forests estimated by this study. The average estimate for southern countries (€54/ha) is considerably higher than for northern (€41/ha) and eastern countries (€20/ha). The paper reveals the degree of importance of the main NTFPs benefits for the country groups and the region as a whole. It also discusses some reasons of concern when drawing policy tools for improving rural income and forest conservation in the Mediterranean.     

基于生态补偿的国家重点生态功能区居民可持续生计影响研究

在对可持续生计的理论机理进行分析的基础上,将熵值法和极差标准化法相结合,确定各指标权重并进行标准化,得到国家重点生态功能区居民生计资本、生态补偿政策以及可持续生计能力的量化值,并利用可行的广义最小二乘法进行实证分析。研究发现,五种生计资本对居民的可持续生计具有正向影响,且影响程度的排序为人力资本>金融资本>社会资本>自然资本>物质资本。生态补偿政策对国家重点生态功能区居民可持续生计能力也具有正向影响,说明生态补偿政策有利于改善当地收入状况,巩固脱贫攻坚成果。最后,生态补偿政策还可通过与人力资本、金融资本、物质资本和自然资本的交互作用,促进国家重点生态功能区居民可持续生计能力的提高。     

Socioeconomic Impacts of Public Forest Policies on Heterogeneous Agricultural Households

Nepal has a long history of returning public forests to local people as part of its community forestry programme. In principle the community forestry programme is designed to address both environmental quality and poverty alleviation. However, concern has been expressed that forest policies emphasise environmental conservation, and that this has a detrimental impact on the use of community forests in rural Nepal where households require access to public forest products to sustain livelihoods. To study the effect of government policies on forest use, an economic model of a typical small community of economically heterogeneous households in Nepal was developed. The model incorporates a link between private agriculture and public forest resources, and uses this link to assess the socioeconomic impacts of forest policies on the use of public forests. Socioeconomic impacts were measured in terms of household income, employment and income inequality. The results show that some forest policies have a negative economic impact, and the impacts are more serious than those reported by other studies. This study shows that existing forest policies reduce household income and employment, and widen income inequalities within communities, compared to alternative policies. Certain forest policies even constrain the poorest households?? ability to meet survival needs. The findings indicate that the socioeconomic impacts of public forest policies may be underestimated in developing countries unless household economic heterogeneity and forestry??s contribution to production are accounted for. The study also demonstrates that alternative policies for managing common property resources would reduce income inequalities in rural Nepalese communities and lift incomes and employment to a level where even the poorest households could meet their basic needs.     

Fire use and prevention by traditional households in the Brazilian Amazon

Fire is an important land management tool for smallholders in the Brazilian Amazon. However, when fires are not properly controlled they can give rise to large-scale wildfires that threaten forests, agricultural plantations, and settlement areas. We use data from a survey of 220 households to examine fire prevention and the scale of fire prevention and burning activities among traditional subsistence households in the Tapajós National Forest in Pará, Brazil. We find that in traditional households, economic variables such as the opportunity cost of household time, market conditions, and the hiring wage are important predictors of these decisions, as is household reliance on standing forest resources for non-timber products. Our results confirm that traditional households actively engage in fire prevention, and suggest that fire prevention is motivated by a desire to protect agricultural plantations as well as standing forest reserves. The results suggest that increased income, improved infrastructure, and improved access to markets for labor and agricultural goods will encourage fire prevention among smallholders in communities with education and planning programs.     

Ecosystem services, agriculture, and rural poverty in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon: Interrelationships and policy prescriptions

Policymakers seeking to modify financial incentives to increase the flows of ecosystem services in and around tropical moist forests must consider where to focus their attention and what collection of incentives can effectively achieve policy objectives. In most cases, policymakers focus on extensively forested areas where the flows of ecosystem services between agriculture and the environment is generally characterized by massive flows of carbon and soil nutrients from forests to agriculture. In these forest margin areas the stock of primary forest is eventually exhausted and the cheap ingredients provided by nature to agriculture become increasingly scarce. At this point, policy interest generally wanes, and agriculture and the environment begin slow declines in ecosystem service exchange, often with negative consequences for rural poverty. How does one promote increased flows of ecosystem services from agricultural lands without increasing poverty when forests and soils have been depleted? Can the standard instruments, e.g., payments for ecosystem services, be effective in such situations, and if so, do the costs to society of securing these services increase? Here we focus on the flows of ecosystem services at the end of the cycle of converting primary forest to agriculture. Primary data from the Bragantina area in the southeastern Brazilian Amazon, an area cleared of primary forest decades ago, are used to characterize smallholder production systems, to describe the flows of ecosystem services into and from these systems, and to develop a bioeconomic model of smallholder agriculture capable of predicting the effects of several types of policy action on ecosystem services provided by and to agriculture, and on-farm household incomes and food self-reliance. Of particular interest is the Proambiente Pilot Program in Brazil, which uses smallholder payment schemes to induce farmers to manage land and forest resources in ways that generate more ecosystem services. Baseline results suggest that smallholder agriculture leads to a gradual loss of ecosystem services (mainly above-ground and root carbon) provided by secondary forest fallows, and that reduction in fallow age leads to reductions in plant diversity. Intensifying agricultural activities accelerates this process, but considerably increases smallholder incomes. Paying farmers for ecosystem services linked to the retention of secondary forests and the Proambiente program both increase area in forest fallow, but the latter substantially reduces farm income because of input use restrictions. In general, programs aiming to promote the production of ecosystem services should not limit farmers' choices of ways to provide them. Employment and food self-reliance issues associated with policy options for increasing on-farm stocks of carbon and plant biodiversity are also explored.     

农户生计资产量化分析方法的应用与验证——基于福建省农村最低生活保障目标家庭瞄准效率的调研数据

农村最低生活保障制度是以贫困农户作为瞄准单位,其运行成功与否取决于制度实施中目标家庭瞄准的准确性。本文从农户生计资产的视角,通过构建农户生计资产指标体系,对低收入农户生计资产进行量化分析,试图达到对农村最低生活保障制度目标家庭准确瞄准的目的。实证结果表明,农户生计资产量化分析可以直观地显示农户生计资产的组合及其配置状况,可用来判断农户整体生活状况,并可对低收入农户进行准确排序。农户生计资产量化分析方法不失为提高制度瞄准效率的一种有益尝试。     

Forest Value and Optimal Rotations in Continuous Cover Forestry

The Faustmann forest rotation model is a celebrated contribution in economics. The model provides a forest value expression and allows a solution to the optimal rotation problem valid for perpetual rotations of even-aged forest stands. However, continuous forest cover forest management systems imply uneven-aged dynamics, and while a number of numerical studies have analysed specific continuous cover forest ecosystems in search of optimal management regimes, no one has tried to capture key dynamics of continuous cover forestry in simple mathematical models. In this paper we develop a simple, but rigorous mathematical model of the continuous cover forest, which strictly focuses on the area use dynamics that such an uneven-aged forest must have in equilibrium. This implies explicitly accounting for area reallocation and for weighting the productivity of each age class by the area occupied. We present results for unrestricted as well as area-restricted versions of the models. We find that land values are unambiguously higher in the continuous cover forest models compared with the even-aged models. Under area restrictions, the optimal rotation age in a continuous cover forest model is unambiguously lower than the corresponding area restricted Faustmann solution, while the result for the area unrestricted model is ambiguous.