Factors affecting participation in joint forest management in the West Bengal state of India

This study analyses participation in joint forest management (JFM). The study is based on in-depth interviews with 150 households of Forest Protection Committees (FPC) in Paschim Medinipur district in the West Bengal state of India. Based on a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of 14 participatory indicators, it follows that “social” aspects of participation are considerably less important in West Bengal than as found elsewhere in India, while the perception of the environment (first and third factor) stand out as the most important aspects of participation in JFM, jointly explaining almost half of the variance. Regression analyses indicate that household size, the number of forest committee meetings, religion of the household, willingness to pay of the household for the forest protection and the size of land holding are important variables for explaining variation in levels of participation. Results from estimating game theoretic models on participation among villagers in JFM indicates that in two out of the four possible situations, harmonious sharing of the benefits is an (Nash) equilibrium, but not unique. In all cases, institutional checks and balances are needed to guarantee mutual participation, which is possible only by strengthening the JFM management body.     

Decentralization,market integration and efficiency-equity trade-offs: Evidence from Joint Forest Management in Ethiopian villages

Extant literature on Joint Forest Management (JFM) impact evaluation has concluded that it generally does not provide sufficient incentives to justify the costs that forest use restrictions impose on local people. However, there is a dearth of evidence concerning whether alternative JFM intervention with improved market linkages for non-timber forest products has similar implications. In this study, we evaluated the income and distributive effects of a JFM program in Ethiopia in which additional support was provided for improved market linkages for non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Exploiting exogenous variation in customary rights across eligible groups of communities that participate in JFM programs, as well as using heteroskedasticity-based instrumentations, we identified the income and distributive effects of the program. Our analysis shows that the program has raised the income of the households who chose to participate by approximately 400 Ethiopian Birr or 26% of per capita expenditure; that result was robust to various specifications. We also found that this effect is largely driven by marketing incentives to use non-timber forest products. However, we found that the program's benefit is biased toward the upper end of the income distribution, a result that points to the inequality-reinforcing effects of the program.     

Using a Delphi approach to identify the most efficacious interventions to improve Indonesia’s forest and land governance

Improvements to forest and land governance are key to addressing deforestation and degradation of peatlands in Indonesia. While this is a priority area, the steps to achieving good forest and land governance have been under-researched. There is a need for better links between theoretically informed academic analysis and work in the field. This study drew together a panel of experts on forest and land governance using a Delphi method to discuss the underlying drivers of deforestation and peatland degradation, and correspondingly, to identify interventions to improve land and forest governance in Indonesia. Seventeen panelists with an average of more than 12 years’ experience reached agreement over four governance interventions: increasing the capacity of local communities to manage and monitor forests and natural resources (65% of panelist’s votes); identify strengths and weaknesses of community organisations and institutions, and develop strategies to improve their performance (65% of panelist’s votes); gazetting forests to clarify land boundaries and determine which areas should be village, community and state forest zone (59% of panelist’s votes); and, integrating participatory community maps into spatial plans to protect local communities and indigenous peoples’ development needs (53% of panelist’s votes). They also supported action research involving the government, private sector and communities, and political economy approaches to researching forest and land governance issues. Panelists indicated that community level approaches such as securing community forest tenure through clarifying land claims and integrating local land tenure into spatial planning had an important role in sustainable forest management.     

Agriculture,Land Tenure and International Migration in Rural Guatemala

In this paper, we ask what the effects of migration and remittances are on land tenure, agriculture and forests, based on empirical evidence from four rural communities in Guatemala. Our results suggest that remittances improve migrant families' access to agricultural land which – depending on the context – fosters more equitable local land distribution patterns or land concentration by migrant families. Changes in the political economy of the country also combine to stimulate these patterns, while remittances contribute to secure land rights held by migrant households. But even though migrant households are acquiring more land, the trend does not change the traditional pattern of land distribution in the country. Regarding forests, significant changes were not observed in two of the communities, while in one we observed forest decline and in the last, forest recovery. A trend away from reliance on the land for survival results in forest recovery.     

Making community forest management work in northern Vietnam by pioneering participatory action

Transfer of land-use rights from the state to individual households and groups of households to encourage community forest management (CFM) and use of forest resources for livelihood improvement, has been in place in Vietnam since the 1990s. However, to date there has been no evidence of allocation to groups of households as community entities with joint ownership. This paper examines the success of processes tested in four villages in mountainous northern Vietnam to officially secure joint ownership of and exclusive rights to community forest land. After four years, implementation of CFM led to enhanced equality and distribution of benefits, and better protection of forest resources. Household income remained largely unchanged, in part because of loss of income from activities which were now illegal, but also because it was too early for benefits to flow from new forestry initiatives. Active participation of and between village communities in land-use planning and allocation, and a willingness to compromise, particularly on the position of land boundaries, were essential elements to ensuring equity in the distribution of benefits. Lack of enabling processes and experience in the implementation of government policies mean that further support for village communities is needed to fully realize the benefits from joint management of the allocated community forest.     

How sustainable is participatory watershed development in India?

Watershed conservation is widely recognized as a major strategy for rural development throughout the developing world. In India, the apparent success of participatory approaches to watershed development resulted in a decentralization of project planning, implementation, and management to local communities at the village scale. We explore the effectiveness of this so‐called community‐based approach in achieving sustainable soil and water conservation in four semi‐arid regions in India, and analyze what factors explain project success. We confirm the result of earlier studies that participatory approaches are more effective in establishing soil and water conservation in the short run. However, our main result is that investments in community organization fail to ensure household commitment to maintenance in the longer term. Without better returns to investment in soil and water conservation and without local institutions to coordinate investment in the long run, the sustainability of participatory watershed management is seriously threatened.     

Tribals,Forests and Resource Conflicts in Kerala,India: The Status Quo of Policy Change

One of the constraints in policy analysis of tribal issues in India has been the lack of analytical approaches that have looked at the existential problem of tribal communities in an integrated manner. While restrictive forest policies have played a major role in fomenting tribal unrest in India and other parts of the world, the part played by “poorly designed” development programmes in creating the impasse cannot be ignored. With reference to the District of Wayanad in north Kerala, India, it is argued that natural resource conflicts involving tribal communities have their roots in both restrictive forest policies and misplaced development strategies. While it is true that, in recent times, there has been a serious effort in India to open forests to tribal communities, this has not been accompanied by a change in basic development thinking. It is argued that, for a paradigm change in policy to occur, tribal communities need to be nurtured in forest settings. This is particularly relevant at this juncture, when the ideal of “biodiversity conservation” is considered to be the defining mark of sustainable development in the “natural resource-rich” countries of the South.     

Adapting to the gender order: Voluntary conservation by forest owners in Finland

In this article we explore the hidden gender order of the biodiversity policy and, in particular, the social and societal positions offered to male and female forest owners in voluntary conservation. Two studies were conducted in the region where the National Biodiversity Program for Southern Finland (“METSO”) has been implemented. Study 1 focused on forest owners’ discursive practices that construct different actor positions to female and male forest owners; 27 interviews with forest owners were analyzed. Three discourses – “conservation threatens forestry,” “forestry threatens conservation,” and “good forestry is conservation” – were identified. Forest owners typically described themselves as “loggers” who were explicitly described as masculine. This was paired with the feminine position of “bystander.” The other two positions found, “protectors” and “political agents”, by contrast, were discussed as non-gendered positions. In Study 2 we examined quantitatively how individual forest owners’ nature conservation preferences and willingness to conserve forests is mediated by gender. The responses of 965 owners were analyzed with structural equation modeling. The endorsement of nature conservation preferences was found to increase willingness to conserve forests only among male owners. The results illustrate how individual forest owners adapt their nature conservation preferences to forestry's masculine socio-cultural context.     

世行贷款湖南森林恢复和发展项目主要技术与经济效益

世行贷款湖南森林恢复与发展项目是2008年冰雪灾害后,森林生态功能恢复与可持续发展的综合系统工程。项目实施区包含湖南省22个县(市、区),项目总投资72510.58万元人民币。项目注重环境保护,采用参与式规划,设计了8种经营模式,建立示范林和示范苗圃,积极推广科技新成果和新技术。项目实施表明:提高了森林覆盖率,增加了劳动就业机会,项目生态效益、社会效益和经济效益显著。     

Carbon Sequestration and Conservation of Tropical Forests Under Uncertainty

Concern for global warming has focused attention on the role of tropical forests in the reduction of ambient CO₂ levels and mitigation of climate change. Deforestation is a major land use change in the tropics, with forest resources undergoing degradation through the influence of logging and conversion to other uses. Land use change is a product of varied local and regional resource use policies. Management of forest resources is one such major temporal factor, influencing resource stability and the carbon pool. Under a given management policy, both the long period of forest growth, and the slow turnover and decay of the carbon pool, enhance the relevance of stand level management policies as cost-effective mechanisms mitigating climate change. Apart from regional level uncertainties like the nature of land use and the estimation of carbon storage in vegetation and soil, the carbon flux of tropical forests is greatly influenced by uncertainty in regenerative capacity of forests and in harvest and management policies. A case study from India is used to develop a transition matrix model of natural forest management, and to explore the economic implications of maintaining and expanding existing carbon sinks. The study further explores the significance of investments in additional carbon sinks in plantation forests, given continued uncertainty in natural forest management.     

Amazon forest on the edge of collapse in the Maranhão State,Brazil

The year 2019 in Brazil was marked by environmental setbacks, which catalyzed the increase of illegal deforestation and fire rates in the Brazilian Amazon. In the Amazon region of Maranhão state, original forest cover diminished from 25 % (24,700 km²) in 2016 to 24 % (23,967 km²) in 2019, and 6,038 km² of remaining forests were degraded by fires and/or illegal logging – processes related to high levels of violence against indigenous and rural communities. Almost half of all deforested areas in the region (36,060 km²) are considered a global restoration hotspot, however secondary vegetation remains unprotected and 8,294 km² were cleared between 2014 and 2018. Due to uncontrolled deforestation and fragmentation, Maranhão has no more forest core areas (outside protected areas) with the minimum size to ensure sustainable forest management practices for timber production. New policies at the state level must promote old-growth and secondary forest conservation and restoration. However, the trends point to the opposite direction: the Ecological-Economic Zoning (ZEE) allows the reduction of forest protection and the State Forest Policy reinforces federal legislation setbacks. The Amazon region of Maranhão state has forest aptitude, and forest and agroforestry product chains would bring social and environmental benefits, making them the best opportunity for sustainable economic development in the region. Therefore, the forest must be re-planted for the benefit of people and nature.     

对中国集体林区产权改革诸问题的认识

集体林产权改革必须尊重历史,尊重广大基本群众对土地和民生的基本诉求,切实维护他们对土地基本的权力,核心是公平,而不是效率,效率上的改革企图只能在局部成功。应当清醒地认识到这次改革目标是有限的。为此提出了4点建议:(1)尽快彻底取消林业税费。(2)加强林业产权制度、基层森林管理模式、利益分配机制的综合研究和试验。(3)林业部门主动放弃“森林”和“环境”等主导名词,而代替为“林农”、“林业”和“林区”“三林问题”新的话语。寻求少数林区作为改革试点,探索林区社会福利事业生成路径和管理模式,用以购买农民的森林所有权和林地的使用权,探索集体林区森林国有化改革的道路。(4)寻求多样化、有弹性的林业改革发展道路。     

Assessing the financial contribution and carbon emission pattern of provisioning ecosystem services in Siwalik forests in Nepal: Valuation from the perspectives of disaggregated users

Provisioning Ecosystem Services (PS) from the forests contribute much to peoples’ livelihoods as well as to the national economy. Previous studies have been constrained by their primary focus on biophysical quantification of PS through modelling and mapping or aggregated monetary valuation, while little attention has been paid to the issues of the distribution of financial benefits among the different forest subgroups. Using market price and substitute good price methods, this paper assesses how local users exploit financial benefits and emit carbon from the use of PS in two dominant community-based forest management systems (community forestry—CF and collaborative forestry—CFM) based on proximity (nearby vs. distant users) and socio-economic class (rich vs. poor users) in the Siwalik region, Nepal. Results indicated that the wealth level of the users plays a key role in the amount of financial benefits generated from the use of PS: (1) users living near forests receive the highest economic benefits compared to those living long distances from the forest area. However the distribution of benefits differs according to management modality and socioeconomic status; (2) CF users, on average, receive higher economic benefits than CFM users; and (3) compared to poor households, rich households receive higher benefits. On average, a rich household adjacent to CF receives USD 1214/year while a poor household living in the same area receives almost half of that (USD 630/year). Similarly, a poor household living far from a forest area generates USD 189/year, slightly higher than that of a rich household in the same area (USD 109/year); and (4) an average CF user emits more carbon (7.4 tCO₂/HH/year) from the consumption of PS than an average CFM user (5 tCO₂/HH/year). Finally, we discuss the reasons behind these differences and draw policy implications for developing and refining constitutions and operational plans of forest user groups.     

Private property and Mennonites are major drivers of forest cover loss in central Yucatan Peninsula,Mexico

The role of land tenure and Mennonites as drivers of deforestation in the Central Yucatan Peninsula has not been empirically assessed. We evaluate different drivers and their relationship to forest cover change between 1986 and 2015 and assess how land tenure and Mennonite communities impact forest cover loss in the Municipality of Hopelchen, Campeche, Mexico. This study shows that forest cover loss has increased in the last decade (2005–2015), and that land tenure regime type is associated with this loss. Throughout the study period, statistical comparisons show rates of forest cover loss were significantly higher in private and federal property compared to forests in ejidos (communal property). Forest cover loss in Mennonite private property was also significantly higher than in non-Mennonite owned private property. The role of land tenure and the expansion of the agroindustrial production model as major drivers of forest cover loss in the region provide important insight into developing municipal land use plans and conservation strategies to reduce deforestation. Programs, incentives and policy directed towards forest conservation in the region that typically target ejido communities, will need to consider the growing trend of private property expansion within federal lands and work more closely with private property owners including Mennonite communities if deforestation reduction programs are to be successful.     

南方集体林区森林经营联合认证实践应用分析

结合中国南方集体林区林权制度改革后的森林经营现状,对森林经营联合认证在其发展的有利条件、障碍及机遇进行深入分析。结果表明:林权改革发展、林业合作社兴起以及联合认证花费较低、信息技术共享等为南方集体林区发展森林联合认证创造了有利条件;林农森林认证思想薄弱、农村缺乏专业技术人才与资金以及林农分布较为分散等问题在一定程度上阻碍了联合认证的发展。此外,在南方集体林区发展森林联合认证还有一系列的机遇,例如"三农政策""扶贫政策"等国家政策的保障,巨大的林产品出口量推动合作社林产品的认证以及社区林业与林区联合认证理念契合等。因此,针对其障碍,提出开展认证培训、增设认证试点、拓宽资金渠道及明确和统一高保护价值森林定义等相应的改善对策。     

森林资源资产化管理与林业法制建设

林业法制是促使森林资源资产化管理改革工作顺利进行的重要保障。为此 ,要针对现行林业法制建设的不足之处 ,通过加快林业法制建设 ,尽快地制定和完善相关的法律、法规 ,并同时注意严格执法和强化执法监督 ,以推进森林资源资产化管理改革的进程。     

Welfare Implications of Community Forest Plantations in Developing Countries: The Orissa Social Forestry Project

Community forest plantations are a common intervention in developing countries. We use household and remote sensing data from Orissa, India, to estimate welfare effects of community forest plantations, in terms of the value of decreased collection times plantations afford users. A selection model, accounting for possible jointness in site location and productivity, is used to estimate collection production functions for different household labor categories in natural and community forests. Two measures of an opportunity cost of time are used to determine welfare effects of time saved due to community forests. We find access to community forests is important to marginal productivity of different labor categories, but to different degrees, highlighting the need to disaggregate household data when analyzing these interventions. We also find substantial welfare improvements from time savings for many households and villages.     

Heterogeneity and assessment uncertainties in forest characteristics and biomass carbon stocks: Important considerations for climate mitigation policies

The management of forests to store carbon and mitigate climate change has received significant international attention during the last decade. Using in situ data from a 2008–2009 forest inventory field campaign in Sri Lanka, this study describes the structural characteristics and carbon stocks of six natural forest types. This paper has a dual scope: i) to highlight the variation in carbon stored in aboveground biomass within and between forest types and ii) to determine the implications of the allometric equations chosen to calculate biomass carbon stocks. This study concerns work related to climate change interventions, such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and other forest-related, performance-based initiatives that require proper monitoring, reporting, and verification of carbon stocks, sinks and emissions. The results revealed that forests are heterogeneous in terms of tree density and height–diameter relationships, both between and within the six forest types investigated. The mean aboveground carbon stock in the different forest types ranged from 22 to 181 Mg C ha⁻¹, and there were statistically significant differences in the carbon stocks of the six forest types in 7 of 15 cases. The estimated carbon stock depended heavily on the allometric equation used for the calculations, the variables, and its application to the specific life zone. Due to the diversity of forest structures, these results suggest that caution should be taken when applying default values to estimate forest carbon stocks and emission values in reporting and accounting schemes. The results also indicated the need for allometric equations that are context-specific for different forest types. Therefore, new field investigations and measurements are needed to determine these specific allometric equations, as well as the potential variation in forest carbon stocks in tropical natural forests.     

Forest cover,development, and sustainability in Costa Rica: Can one policy fit all?

Forest Transition Theory offers the hope that global economic development can continue in tandem with forest recovery. Costa Rica has been lauded for its successful forest transition—once the fastest deforesting country in Central America, forests began to regrow in the 1980s and have had a steady trajectory of recovery since. This forest regrowth can be linked temporally to Costa Rican policies that have promoted tourism and discouraged small-scale agriculture. We use a case study from the Bellbird Biological Corridor (Corredor Biológico Pájaro Campana; CBPC), Costa Rica, combining remote sensing analysis with interviews and ethnography, to unravel the relationship between national policy, forest regrowth, and social-ecological sustainability. The forest cover change analysis between 1986 and 2014 indicates that, at the parcel-level, national policy has served to promote farm abandonment in favor of tourism and that this change has been critical to forest regrowth. However, these changes have occurred within a development framework that has created new social-ecological challenges that threaten future forest and economic sustainability. Examining the parcel-level impacts of the driving forces of landscape change highlights that forest cover is an insufficient proxy for conservation success, and conservation policy focused primarily on forest recovery may create new sustainability challenges.     

The meanings of forest governance in Esmeraldas,Ecuador

Participatory forestry has become the most accepted way of exploiting timber resources in tropical rain forests. This paper shows the links between participatory forestry, sustainable forest management and the continuing objective of reconciling conservation with commercial development in the province of Esmeraldas, one of the poorest and most rapidly deforested regions of South America. I describe and contextualize the evolving logging programme of a leading Ecuadorian wood-processing group to show that the decentralization of the development process, the recognition of local communities as legal entities in the management of natural resources, and the active involvement of profit-oriented firms in biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation all contribute to the emergence of new alliances between the Ecuadorian government, the logging companies, conservation and human rights organizations, and local Black and indigenous communities. My central argument is that devolution in this context leads to conflictive interpretations of regulation. I end with a discussion of the multi-scalar nature of “forest governance”, and highlight the contribution it makes to our understanding of control, regulation and management in new contexts of privatization and decentralization.