At a crossroads: consequential trends in recognition of community-based forest tenure from 2002-2017

ABSTRACT

Insecure, contested, and unjust forest tenure arrangements undermine forest investment and protection, fuel conflict, and jeopardize Indigenous Peoples’, local communities’, and indigenous and community women’s rights, livelihoods, and development prospects. While legally recognized community forests tend to have lower rates of deforestation, store more carbon and benefit more people than forests managed by either public or private entities, evidence shows over two-thirds of forests remain controlled by governments – a significant portion of which is contested by indigenous and local communities who traditionally own, manage, and depend on these forests. It is therefore all the more critical that governments support and advance communities’ forest tenure rights. Using longitudinal tenure data and analysis of global forest ownership trends developed by the Rights and Resources Initiative, this article details the distribution of statutory forest rights across 58 countries covering nearly 92% of global forests over the fifteen-year period from 2002–2017.     

Impact of a moral hazard problem in the Joint Forest Management Programme: a study from forest‐dependent households in West Bengal

This study seeks to explore the impact of a moral hazard problem in the Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme between the government and forest fringe communities of a province in West Bengal, India. It suggests that if there is no incentive plan for the poor, it is hard for the government to monitor their actions. The poor tend to take welfare subsidies and yet harvest optimally. A good incentive fee dependent on their work (output) is required for livelihood sustenance of poor people and sustainability of forest resources.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Legal exclusions,private wealth and livelihoods: An analysis of work time allocation in protected areas

Do exclusionary forest access regimes have an unequal impact on livelihood activities? This paper analyzes primary data on time allocation to livelihood activities by forest communities in the Indian Himalayas to investigate this question. Estimation results are consistent with the hypothesis that forest access regimes affect both forest extraction behavior and other livelihood strategies. Residents of sanctuary forests, experiencing higher restrictions on forest use, decrease the proportion of time allocated to forest extraction and livestock activities, but compensate by increasing their time allocation to agriculture in comparison to residents of state-controlled protected forests. However, wealthy residents of the wildlife sanctuary expend a higher proportion of their time in managing livestock and extracting forest resources in comparison to its less affluent residents. Thus wealth enables circumvention of access restrictions despite legalization of exclusion. Findings of this study have implications for design of biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration policies.     

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.     

REDD+and community-controlled forests in low-income countries: Any hope for a linkage?

Deforestation and forest degradation are estimated to account for between 12% and 20% of annual greenhouse gas emissions and in the 1990s (largely in the developing world) released about 5.8 Gt per year, which was bigger than all forms of transport combined. The idea behind REDD + is that payments for sequestering carbon can tip the economic balance away from loss of forests and in the process yield climate benefits. Recent analysis has suggested that developing country carbon sequestration can effectively compete with other climate investments as part of a cost effective climate policy.This paper focuses on opportunities and complications associated with bringing community-controlled forests into REDD +. About 25% of developing country forests are community controlled and therefore it is difficult to envision a successful REDD + without coming to terms with community controlled forests. It is widely agreed that REDD + offers opportunities to bring value to developing country forests, but there are also concerns driven by worries related to insecure and poorly defined community forest tenure, informed by often long histories of government unwillingness to meaningfully devolve to communities. Further, communities are complicated systems and it is therefore also of concern that REDD + could destabilize existing well-functioning community forestry systems.     

The relation between forest clearance and household income among native Amazonians: Results from the Tsimane' Amazonian panel study, Bolivia

The Amazon rain forest harbors some of the world's richest biological diversity. During the twentieth century, two types of actors cleared that forest: native Amazonians and outside encroachers. Of the two actors, we know more about what drives outside encroachers to clear forest than about what drives native Amazonians to clear forest. The past research focus has served well because during the twentieth century outside encroachers cleared most of the Amazonian forest. But the past research focus needs to be expanded because native Amazonians are claiming de jure stewardship of the forests they inhabit, and with tighter jurisdiction over those forests will likely come changes in the amount of forest native Amazonians clear. Prior research in rural areas of low-income nations suggests that household income affects household forest clearance. To estimate the effects of household real income on the total forest area (old-growth + fallow) cleared by households we use a panel composed of five annual household surveys (2002-2006, inclusive) from 324 households of a native Amazonian society in Bolivia (Tsimane'). We control for household and village fixed effects and use an instrumental variable for household income. We find positive and significant household real income elasticities of forest clearance of 0.35 and 0.47 and an increase in forest clearance of 5.3%/year. The main finding stood up well to sensitivity analysis. These estimates suggest that in the near future, the forest in the Tsimane' territory will likely face increasing pressure from the Tsimane' themselves, not just from outside encroachers.     

Economic cost of deforestation in semi-deciduous forests — A case of two forest districts in Ghana

The ecological, economic and socio-cultural roles of forests are under threat in Ghana due to the high rate of deforestation. Efforts are being made to combat this problem through rehabilitation measures. However, the costs of deforestation and restoration benefits are not adequately estimated. This paper fills in the gap in knowledge by providing an empirical estimation of the cost of deforestation in monetary terms. Primary data collected regarding timber, non-timber forest products and soils in semi-deciduous forests were analyzed using opportunity cost and replacement cost techniques. The results emphasize differences in the value of these forest goods and services lost annually. The largest losses were in stumpage fees, edible fruits, and avoided carbon emissions values. The results show that US$133,650,000 gross revenue, equivalent to 2.6% of the 2008 agricultural sector Gross Domestic Product, is lost annually. It can be concluded that restoring the degraded forest lands would bring benefits particularly to the local communities through increased stumpage revenues and harvest of non-timber forest products, as well as additional funds from carbon credits. It is recommended that stakeholders of forest resources are made aware of these costs in order to raise awareness of what they are losing through deforestation.     

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.     

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。     

Increasing Forest Conservation in Norway: Consequences for Timber and Forest Products Markets

This paper analyses the impacts on timber and forest products markets of increasing forest conservation in Norway. A partial equilibrium forest sector model is applied to analyse effects on roundwood and forest products prices, quantities and trade of four alternative conservation extents. These alternatives are based on a recent biological analysis of the conservation needs in order to protect biodiversity in Norway. Roundwood prices are projected to increase moderately when conservation increases domestically only, since the Norwegian forest industry substitutes imported fibre for domestic. The impacts on roundwood prices are more substantial if also Norways forest products trading partners increase the forest conservation. If forest owners voluntarily conserve forests subject to an economic compensation (which currently is the most likely policy in Norway), the model results imply that forest owners on average are better off with increased conservation. Domestic sawnwood production is projected to reduce when assuming increasing forest conservation, while the production level in the pulp and paper industry is almost unaffected in the short-run. Finally, increasing demand for forest products as a result of environmental good-will may increase roundwood prices and harvest levels in unaffected forest areas significantly.     

Socioeconomic predictors of forest use values in the Peruvian Amazon: A potential tool for biodiversity conservation

Conservation is a crisis discipline requiring rapid action with limited funds. This study examines the potential of socioeconomic variables to predict forest use values. If natural resource use can be predicted from socioeconomic data, conservation planners could rapidly identify and focus conservation programs on the sectors of local populations that most intensively utilize local flora and fauna. Families in three communities in the northern Peruvian Amazon were surveyed over a 6-month period. Data were collected on use of flora and fauna from six locally determined use categories (food, medicine and poisons, wood, weavings, adornments, and “other”) in forest types of three age classes (fallow fields—very young forests, young secondary forests, and old secondary forests). Forest use values were the dependant variables calculated in $/ha/year. Socioeconomic variables included: age, education, family size, residence time, land worked, land owned, number of fishing nets, chickens, pigs, cows, and/or mules owned (all proxies for productive assets), and level of ecological knowledge (ability of informants to correctly identify forest species and answer basic questions about their biology). Ordinary least square multiple regressions were run independently for each forest type. Regressions were also run separately for the two most valuable use categories, food and wood. Low R² adjusted values (all < 0.3) reflect the difficulty in predicting human behavior due to confounding variables and complex interactions. Residence time and a household's community of residence were the most significant predictors of forest use values. Households in Vista Alegre, the community with the highest density of people and smallest landholdings per household, extracted the highest value of forest products per hectare. The longer a family stayed in any community the higher the value of forest goods they extracted. If families that lived in an area longest are the most intensive extractors of forest products, they should be a major focus for conservation programming. In addition, the higher value of products extracted from forests by some families may make them more open to strategies seeking to protect long-term viability of the resources they utilize. The importance of residence time also indicates that planners need to account for changes in the resource use patterns of stakeholders over time.     

Community–Industry Contracting over Natural Resource use in a Context of Weak Property Rights: The Case of Indonesia

Decentralization in Indonesia has resulted in an increased influence of local communities over the terms of logging agreements with timber companies. The outcomes of such community–company negotiations vary significantly across communities. What are the conditions that cause this variation, and how can the outcomes be more effectively and efficiently influenced by third-party actors such as the local government or NGOs? This paper addresses these questions by developing a game-theoretic model to illustrate the strategic interactions between communities and companies. The model allows for endogeneity of de facto property rights and bargaining positions. We show that third-party actions to improve the community’s bargaining position by raising its reservation utility may result in an increase in the area logged and thereby harm the environment. Our results indicate that the strategy of intervention matters. In particular, strategies that raise the sensitivity of interventions to local logging threats are likely to be more cost-effective in supporting communities and reducing forest degradation than more indiscriminatory strategies. The model will be relevant to other situations where communities negotiate contracts over natural resource use with outside actors in a context of weak property rights, a situation increasingly observed in other developing countries.     

Accounting for India's forest wealth

In this paper, we account for forest wealth in India. Changes in the timber and carbon wealth embodied in these forests are related to important green national accounting aggregates such as genuine saving and the change in wealth per capita. Important accounting issues include the timing of carbon releases that occur when forests are disturbed, as well as the valuation of these releases. Our empirical findings suggest that while India's forest wealth is substantial, net changes in this wealth are arguably not so large at least in relation to GNP. However, when viewed in the context of the wealth-diluting effects of population growth this implies a far larger additional savings effort is required to cover the (net) loss in forest values than otherwise appears to be the case. Finally, we examine ways in which the accounting approach that we adopt can be reconciled with approaches which stress conserving forest wealth.     

Barriers to Massachusetts forest landowner participation in carbon markets

U.S. forests, including family-owned forests, are important carbon sinks and sources for carbon sequestration. Family forest owners constitute a significant portion of the overall forestland in the U.S., but little is known about their preferences for participating in carbon sequestration programs. The goal of this research is to understand what motivates Massachusetts family forest owners to participate in carbon markets. The study estimates the probability these landowners would engage in carbon sequestration programs using data from a survey of 930 Massachusetts family forest owners. Results from a random effects ordered probit indicate that under a carbon scenario similar to the current voluntary scheme, very few of these landowners would be interested in participating. Supply analysis indicates these landowners are more influenced to participate by factors other than price. Regression analysis results suggest that survey respondents are concerned about early withdrawal penalties, additionality requirements, and contract length. Forest owner harvesting plans, opinions about forest usage, and beliefs about climate change all play a significant role in the decision to participate. The study suggests that policy makers should consider the reasons behind these low participation rates, because private forest owners could play a pivotal role in the carbon sequestration potential of forests.     

Spatial Heterogeneity of Willingness to Pay for Forest Management

The paper investigates the spatial heterogeneity of public’s preferences for the implementation of a new country-wide forest management and protection program in Poland. Spatial econometric methods and high resolution geographical information system data related to forest characteristics are used to explain the variation in individual-specific willingness to pay (WTP) values, derived from a discrete choice experiment study. We find that respondents’ WTP is higher the closer they live to their nearest forest, and the scarcer forests are in the area where they live. Interestingly, the higher the ecological value of forests in respondents’ area, the more people prefer extending areas of national forest protection. We also investigate spatial patterns in individual-specific WTP scores and in latent class membership probabilities, finding that preferences are indeed spatially clustered. We argue that this clustering should be taken into account in forest management and policy-making.     

常绿阔叶林恢复过程植物物种多样性的变化

Evergreen broad-leaved forest is one of the most important vegetation types in China. Because of the human activities, evergreen broad-leaved forest has been destroyed extensively, leading to degraded ecosystem. It is urgent to conserve and restore these natural forests in China.tn this paper, the tendency and rate of species diversity restoration of the evergreen broad-lea ved forest in Darning Mountain has been studied. The main results are as follows:(a) in subtropical mid-mountain area, species diversity in degraded evergreen broad-leaved forest can be restored. Through analyzing b diversity index of communities in different time and space, it was found that the species composition of communities tend to be the same as that in the zonal evergreen broad-leaved forest. (b) The restoration rate of evergreen broad-leaved forest was very fast. Planting Chinese fir after clear-cutting and controlled burning of the forest 178 species appeared in a 60Om^2, sample area after 20 years““ natural recovering. Among these species, 58 were tree layer and the height of community reached 18m, The survey suggested that it would take only 20 years for the degraded forest to develop into community composed of light demanding broad-leaved pioneer trees and rain-tolerance broad-leaved trees, and it need another 40-80 years to reach the stage consisting of min-tulerance evergreen broad-leaved trees, (c) Species number increased quickly at the early stage (2-20 years) during vegetation recovering process toward the climax, and decreased at the min-stage (50-60 years ), then maintained a relatively stable level at the late-stage (over 150 years).     

CHINA'S FORESTS UNDER ECONOMIC REFORM: TIMBER SUPPLIES, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION, AND RURAL RESOURCE ACCESS

China's national forest statistics describe increases in total forest cover during the 1980s but mask the diversity of responses to economic reform and some characteristics of the forests and, forest uses. The provincial-level statistics reported here confirm the regional studies and anecdotal reports about widespread fellings of forest in the non-state managed areas but demonstrate that high rates of harvest occurred in the state-managed forests, too. These disaggregated statistics reveal the importance of direct investment projects, as opposed to pure reform measures, to provide environmental services and to increase, forest cover overall. In addition, these statistics provide evidence of an increase in the use of forest land for cash forests and fuelwood forests, as opposed to timber forests, by rural forest managers trying to meet their local resource and income needs.