As governments realise they are not always best at managing natural resources, many are transferring land rights to communities. As well as improving environmental management, this process is expected to reduce poverty. However, important social differences in communities allow some people to benefit more than others.

Research from the University of York, UK, looks at community forestry schemes in Nepal. In Nepal, there have been environmental improvements since the introduction of common property systems for forests, including more sustainable use and collection of forest products. However, in terms of economic gains, the poorest and most marginalised members of communities receive the fewest benefits.

Not all members of a community want to use forest resources in the same way. Differences in wealth, culture, caste and gender mean that people have different priorities and beliefs about how to manage and use the forests. In many places, Forest User Groups (FUGs) make decisions about management of community forest resources. These groups usually consist of the most powerful community members. These people make decisions for their own benefit, and ignore the needs of poorer people and women. This means poor people lose out economically from the shared resource and have less incentive to follow rules designed to protect the forest.

The research examines the extent to which subsistence farmers benefit:

• A widespread belief is that women and the poorest members of communities rely most heavily on community forest resources. In Nepal, however, richer and male-headed households rely more on these resources.
• Forest product collection laws favour richer households: unrestricted collection is only allowed for products such as fodder and leaf litter, rather than more valuable resources, such as firewood and high value non-timber forest products (NTFPs).
• High caste households and those headed by men tend to have more private land and livestock. These households also use forest products the most and so receive the highest income from shared community resources.
• The common property system has banned many activities that poor people used to rely on, such as making charcoal, fire wood and NTFP collection.
• Well-educated people use fewer forest products, because they have alternative employment opportunities.

Handing over land rights and resource management powers to communities in Nepal has provided fewer benefits to the poorest people. In order to improve equity in community-managed forests, the different groups within communities must be considered. One potentially fairer system would be to allow for transferable rights over forest products within a common property system. For example, poor people who do not have livestock could sell their share of forest products, such as tree and grass fodder, to another member within the FUG.  

Other changes could improve the fairness of community forestry in Nepal:

• increasing the fairness of decision making and management by ensuring that FUGs represent all social groups, including women
• encouraging alternative employment opportunities to reduce dependence on forest resources.

Source(s):
‘Poverty, property rights and collective action: understanding the distributive aspects of common property resource management’, Environment and Development Economics, 10: 7–31, by Bhim Adhikari, 2005

Funded by: The South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE)

id21 Research Highlight: 18 November 2005

Further Information:
Bhim Adhikari
Environment Department
The University of York
Heslington
York, YO10 5DD
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1904 432 999
Fax: +44 (0)1904 432 998
Contact the contributor: bpa100@york.ac.uk

University of York, UK

Other related links:
'Supporting community forest management in Lao PDR'

'Conflicting aims: tribal rights and conservation practice in India’s forests'

'Key issues in effective joint forest management'

'Working together to protect forests in India'

'Forest ownership–community rights on the rise'