Are We Getting There? Evidence of Decentralized Forest Management from the Tanzanian Miombo Woodlands

Lund, Jens Friis; Treue, Thorsten

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2008.01.014

Cited by 146 publications

(98 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…The generally low exchange value of miombo woodlands and other forest ecosystems in many developing countries [5,20,59] and inefficiencies in generating cash benefits accentuate the importance of broadening incentives and benefits. This also minimizes perverse incentives associated with cash-driven approaches, including marginalization of the poor [34,60], temptations to overharvest valuable species, take forest-management short cuts, and to free-ride on the project/government. In contrast, to base incentives mechanisms solely or overwhelmingly on such low potential financial returns is to build co-management on a shaky foundation.…”

Section: Discussion-co-management Economic Incentives and Reciprocalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing People Back into Protected Forests in Developing Countries: Insights from Co-Management in Malawi

Zulu¹

2013

Sustainability

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This study examines struggles to bring people back into protected forests to enhance sustainable forest management and livelihoods using insights emerging from a co-management project in Malawi. It uses mixed social science methods and a process-based conceptualization of co-management to analyze experiences, and theory of reciprocal altruism to explain major findings of continuing local forest-user commitment to co-management despite six years of conservation burdens largely for minimal financial benefits. It argues that overemphasis on cash incentives as the motivation for -self-interested‖ users to participate in co-management overlooks locally significant non-cash motivations, inflates local expectations, and creates perverse incentives that undermine socio-ecological goals. Some non-cash incentives outweighed cash-driven ones. Findings support broadening of incentives mechanisms, including via nested cross-scale institutional arrangements for holistic management that integrates adjacent forests into forest-reserve co-management. Strengthened institutions, improving community/government and intracommunity trust, improved village forests easing pressure on the reserve, measures minimizing elite capture, and impetus from an external threat, enhanced forest condition. Generous forest rights and appropriate community licensing and benefit-sharing systems also helped. Bureaucratic/donor inefficiencies, wood-extraction challenges, poor forest-based enterprise development, and low resource value undermined performance. Insights on forest-management planning, fair cost-sharing, targeting the poor, and need for social learning are highlighted.

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Section: Discussion-co-management Economic Incentives and Reciprocalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing People Back into Protected Forests in Developing Countries: Insights from Co-Management in Malawi

Zulu¹

2013

Sustainability

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“…Agrawal 2007). Another body of recent studies focusing on the relations between communities and various State actors indicate that active support or, as a minimum, acceptance by the latter of attempts by local communities to establish authority and legitimacy as natural resources managers, is essential given the vast opportunities for powerful higher-level State actors to quench or nurture fragile local initiatives (Ribot 2004;Benjamin 2008;Lund and Treue 2008). These and other recent studies illustrate how processes of local participation in forest management can be construed as a continuous power struggle that unfolds in numerous ways and forums between external actors and internal community fractions over the processes and outcomes of forest management (Nightingale 2002;Pérez-Cirera and Lovett 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Curse or blessing? Local elites in Joint Forest Management in India’s Shiwaliks

et al. 2010

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This article suggests that local elites play an instrumental roleeither with positive or negative consequences -in shaping struggles for power over processes and outcomes of participatory forest management interventions, when implemented in communities characterized by social hierarchies. We show how the contrasting outcomes of joint forest management in two case study villages cannot be attributed to institutional reform, but appear to be caused largely by differences in the role assumed by local elites. The evidence indicates that institutional reform itself does not guarantee changes in the actual management of natural resources. Rather, vested interests at the local level and among State actors may continue to shape events while working within or beyond the new institutional landscape. On the basis of the results of our case studies, the article poses the hypothesis that a network theory of social capital could be a useful way of analyzing such diverse outcomes of similar institutional reforms implemented in relatively similar communities. We conclude by arguing that attempts at institutional reform at the level of the community in hierarchical societies should proceed with modest expectations, 708Kulbhushan Balooni et al.and an eye for the incentives facing local elites and the implementing and facilitating State actors.

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“…In these smaller scale, more localized trading networks, local authorities would have distinct advantages in crafting and enforcing rules for the artisanal exploitation of the forests. They would be more likely to have the detailed knowledge necessary to discover the small, but cumulatively significant, transgressions in managing dry forests that frequently occur [45].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Dynamics of Deforestation in the Wet and Dry Tropics: A Comparison with Policy Implications

Rudel

2017

Forests

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Forests in the dry tropics differ significantly from forests in the humid tropics in their biomass and in their socio-ecological contexts, so it might be reasonable to assume that the dynamics that drive deforestation in these two settings would also differ. Until recently, difficulties in measuring the extent of dry tropical forests have made it difficult to investigate this claim empirically. The release of high resolution LANDSAT satellite imagery in 2013 has removed this impediment, making it possible to identify variations in the extent of wet and dry forests within countries by measuring variations in the canopy cover of their forests. These metrics have in turn made it possible to investigate human differences in the dynamics of deforestation between dry forested and wet forested nations in the tropics. Cross-national analyses suggest that international trade in agricultural commodities plays a more important role in driving deforestation in the wet tropics than it does in the dry tropics. The variable salience of international trade as a driver has important implications, described here, for the success of policies designed to slow deforestation in the dry tropics and the wet tropics. Curbing dry forest losses, in particular, would appear to require locally focused and administered policies.

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Are We Getting There? Evidence of Decentralized Forest Management from the Tanzanian Miombo Woodlands

Cited by 146 publications

References 42 publications

Bringing People Back into Protected Forests in Developing Countries: Insights from Co-Management in Malawi

Bringing People Back into Protected Forests in Developing Countries: Insights from Co-Management in Malawi

Curse or blessing? Local elites in Joint Forest Management in India’s Shiwaliks

The Dynamics of Deforestation in the Wet and Dry Tropics: A Comparison with Policy Implications

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