Past management affects success of current joint forestry management institutions in Tajikistan

Abstract

In the Pamir Mountains of Eastern Tajikistan, the clearance of mountain forests to provide fuelwood for an increasing population is a major source of environmental degradation. International development organisations have implemented joint forestry management institutions to help restore once-forested mountainous regions, but the success of these institutions has been highly variable. This study uses a multi-method approach, drawing on institutional analysis supported by Elinor Ostrom's design principles and socialecological system framework in combination with resilience thinking to help understand why some communities in Tajikistan manage their forests more sustainably than others. The application of the design principles provided helpful guidance for practitioners implementing joint forestry management. The social-ecological system analysis revealed both 'history of use' and 'tenant density' as positively associated with forest condition. However, we also identify limitations of snapshot social-ecological assessments. In particular, we illustrate the critical importance of considering historical legacy effects, such as externally imposed centralised governance regimes (that characterise many post-Soviet states) in attempts to understand current management practices. Our work shows how a more nuanced understanding of institutional change and inertia can be achieved by adopting a resilience approach to institutional analysis, focusing on the importance of reorganisation.Lessons learned from our analysis should be widely applicable to common pool resource management in other semi-arid forested landscapes as well as in regions with a strong centralised governance legacy.

A relational turn for sustainability science? Relational thinking, leverage points and transformations

“…But many development programs have ignored these relationships, introducing 'improved' wheat seed varieties for production alone, gradually eroding biocultural diversity. As a practitioner and then researcher in Tajikistan, I had also used resilience assessments and the social-ecological systems framework to understand differential success in common pool resource management (Haider et al 2012(Haider et al , 2019a. This felt like a great step towards integrating social-ecological understanding and action.…”

Community perceptions of co-managing Tajik National Park

“…In the case of Tajikistan, the three root causes of biodiversity loss are mainly economic (e.g., over-harvesting due to poverty pressure), political (e.g., lack of rules, laws and clear management policies; and tensions caused by a transition to a post-Soviet system and the civil war), and institutional (e.g., lack of cooperation and collaboration among institutions) (Squires and Safarov 2013). Drawing upon community knowledge in areas with limited data helps clarify what levels of protection according to scientific findings are needed (Squires and Safarov 2013;Haider et al 2018;Shokirov and Backhaus 2020).…”

“…Recently, the governments of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have started to share decisionmaking processes and the management of local resources with local communities through decentralized governance approaches (Shigaeva, Dear, and Wolfgramm 2012;Haider et al 2018). These approaches have, for example, helped to empower community-level pasture user associations (Shigaeva et al 2012).…”

“…Alternatively, failing to share decision-making with communities for non-governmental organization (NGO) projects, for example when financing projects without establishing common values and objectives before investing, has been shown to diminish community support (Freizer 2005). Haider et al (2018) suggest that implementing joint forest management programmes between NGOs and the government would help to improve forest resource management. However, these new approaches need time to be tested and adjusted to locally established rules and need to form 'enabling conditions for collective actions' (Haider et al 2018, 18), such as clear rules, systematic monitoring of resources and local leadership.…”

Assessing the resilience of the belt and road countries and its spatial heterogeneity: A comprehensive approach

“…Based on these measurement methods, scholars have measured and studied the resilience of different regions [20,21]. Research on spatial heterogeneity is also abundant [22,23]. However, their studies may be more reasonable if they had considered this situation, for example, the lack of research on a wide range of areas, especially the research on the resilience of "the Belt and Road" countries.…”