Forests for People

Community Rights and Forest Tenure Reform

Anne M Larson, Deborah Barry, Ganga Ram Dahal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781844079186
• eBook ISBN: 9781136543760
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Who has rights to forests and forest resources?

In recent years governments in the South have transferred at least 200 million hectares of forests to communities living in and around them. This book assesses the experience of what appears to be a new international trend that has substantially increased the share of the world's forests under community administration. Based on research in over 30 communities in selected countries in Asia (India, Nepal, Philippines, Laos, Indonesia), Africa (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana) and Latin America (Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua), it examines the process and outcomes of granting new rights, assessing a variety of governance issues in implementation, access to forest products and markets and outcomes for people and forests.

Forest tenure reforms have been highly varied, ranging from the titling of indigenous territories to the granting of small land areas for forest regeneration or the right to a share in timber revenues. While in many cases these rights have been significant, new statutory rights do not automatically result in rights in practice, and a variety of institutional weaknesses and policy distortions have limited the impacts of change. Through the comparison of selected cases, the chapters explore the nature of forest reform, the extent and meaning of rights transferred or recognized, and the role of authority and citizens' networks in forest governance. They also assess opportunities and obstacles associated with government regulations and markets for forest products and the effects across the cases on livelihoods, forest condition and equity.

Published with CIFOR

Part I

I Introduction

1
Tenure Change in the Global South

Anne M. Larson, Deborah Barry and Ganga Ram Dahal

In Asia, Africa and Latin America, governments are granting new tenure rights to communities living in and around forests. An important shift in forest tenure has occurred since 1985, with at least 200 million hectares (ha) of forest recognized or legally transferred to communities and indigenous people (White and Martin, 2002). In a study of 25 of the 30 most-forested countries, Sunderlin et al (2008) found that 15 countries had experienced an increase in land designated for and/or owned by communities since 2002 alone. Today, then, 74.3 per cent of the global forest estate is owned and administered by governments; 2.3 per cent is owned by governments but designated for use by communities; 9.1 per cent is owned by communities and the remaining 14.2 per cent is owned by individuals and firms (Sunderlin et al, 2008). The percentage of forests in the hands of communities¹ in the developing world alone is much higher: 22 per cent in 2002 and 27 per cent in 2008 (Hatcher, personal communication, based on data from Sunderlin et al, 2008).

The change in forest tenure constitutes a kind of ‘forest reform’ (Pacheco et al, 2008a; Taylor et al, 2007), comparable to the widespread agrarian reforms of the mid-20th century. The current reforms are due to the growing recognition of rights and benefits belonging to people living in and around forests. They may originate as much ‘from above’ as ‘from below’, with forces driving and shaping reforms emerging from communities and social movements, international donors or the state.

This book explores the nature, goals and results of such reforms in practice. It is based on research at more than 30 sites in 10 countries that have all promoted, in some way, greater local rights to forests. The countries are in Asia (India, Nepal and the Philippines), Africa (Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Ghana) and Latin America (Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala and Nicaragua). Less intensive research was also conducted in Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao-PDR) and work in Indonesia has already been well described in CIFOR publications (Figure 1.1). Literature reviews were conducted in all three world regions to help ground the analysis of field research in historical and cultural contexts.

Figure 1.1 Map of the research sites

Forest tenure reforms range from the titling of vast territories to indigenous communities, to the granting of small land areas for forest regeneration or the right to a share in timber revenues. New statutory rights do not automatically result in rights in practice, however, nor do local rights necessarily lead to improvements in livelihoods or forest condition. To understand the meaning of new rights it is important to know what rights people held previously, particularly de facto, or customary, rights, since formal statutory rights may place new restrictions on communities. Because people held rights previously in most cases, it is often more appropriate to refer to the recognition or formalization of rights, rather than the transfer of rights.

In most countries, the research was undertaken specifically with local partners, sometimes the new rights holders themselves, who would be able to take advantage of the process and its results to promote community rights, effective forest management and livelihood opportunities. Preliminary research found that institutional weaknesses and policy distortions have limited the impacts of change. Hence the project was designed to generate information not only for academic analysis but also to promote empowerment and engage in effective policy dialogue with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), donors and governments.

To reflect our findings, this book takes an ambitious approach. Rather than present the results of our research through chapters on individual case studies, we address cross-cutting issues that we believe capture the essence of the reforms: the challenges they face and the opportunities they unlock. Each topic constitutes a central aspect of forest governance and builds not only on the case studies but also on the existing literature and the experience of each author.

This introduction places the research in context. It begins with a brief discussion of forest tenure reform in light of community rights and forest conservation and a short introduction to each region, leaving the main discussion of other governance issues to the chapters. The next section introduces the research project itself, including the goals, methods and models of tenure reform studied. This is followed by the definition of the concepts used in the study and in this book. The subsequent section introduces the chapters and the final section reminds us of the global context in which the tenure reform is playing out.

Why forest tenure reform?

The literature on forests and on conservation is replete with cases of rural com munities whose livelihoods have been affected by state policies or the intrusion of outsiders into ‘their’ forests. These include state-authorized forest concessions (e.g. Anaya and Grossman, 2002), forest classification schemes that prohibit community use (e.g. Peluso, 1992), mining and petroleum concessions (e.g. Oyono, et al, 2006; Kimerling, 1991; Lynch and Harwell, 2002), evictions from, or severe limitations on their livelihood activities in, parks or protected areas (e.g. Dowie, 2005; Spierenburg et al, 2008; Cernea 1997, 2006; Brockington and Igoe, 2006) and colonization or invasions by farmers and ranchers (e.g. Schmink and Wood, 1984; Colfer et al, 1997; Fulcher, 1982; Baird and Shoemaker, 2005). In many cases, these forests, historically, had been used and managed by communities themselves.

Colonial policies justified the centralization of forests based on ‘scientific forestry’ principles (see Chapter 7). On the one hand, forests were seen as public goods and strategic resources that needed both protection and ‘rational use’ in order to provide both goods and income for the future. On the other, however, their exploitation often favoured elite interests over others. For example, in Ghana,

…before 1924, natives held [forest] concessions and sold wood upon the same basis as Europeans. But the competition became so keen…that in a 1924 administrative order, the government declared that a native could not cut and sell wood except for his own use without making a deposit with the government of twenty-five hundred francs – a prohibitive sum.

(Buell, 1928, p256, cited in Larson and Ribot, 2007)

In addition, explicitly discriminatory policies have also sometimes been accompanied by corruption, rent seeking and the creation of patronage networks by government officials – patterns that continue to this day (Larson and Ribot, 2007; Sunderlin et al, 2008).

From purely a rights perspective, there is little room for doubt that many communities living in forests today deserve a better deal. Numerous grassroots organizations and movements around the world have spoken out to demand rights to forests. Latin American indigenous movements, in particular, have sought, in some cases successfully, to regain traditional rights over their historic territories and forests. At the same time, research has begun to examine the effect of forests on vulnerability (e.g. Hobley, 2007) or their potential role in poverty alleviation (Sunderlin et al, 2005).

But what about forest conservation? Sayer et al (2008, p3) write, ‘The harsh reality for conservation is that, for most local people, conversion to agriculture or to industrial estate crops provides a faster route out of poverty than either local forest management or total protection.’ There is no guarantee that local people will conserve forests if they have more, or more secure, rights, though the central tenet – that secure rights permit longer-term horizons and greater interest in sustainability – appears to hold. In some cases, however, converting forests to other uses will bring greater livelihood benefits and may even be sustainable over the long term (Tacconi, 2007a). In others, more secure tenure rights have clearly improved forest management (Sayer et al, 2008).

What will work best for conservation depends on the causes of deforestation and degradation. In some cases the state itself promotes logging, clear-cutting and conversion to industrial crops, as in Indonesia, which has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world (FAO, 2005). In other cases, multiple interests in forests and forestlands have led to invasion, colonization and conversion. Our research finds that where communities have demanded tenure rights, a common reason is outside encroachment on their land. In Latin America, there is substantial overlap between standing forest and indigenous communities (see www.raisg.socioambiental.org) and land invasions by external actors are a leading cause of deforestation (Geist and Lambin, 2002; Stocks et al, 2007).² Securing community tenure rights – and, in particular, defending their exclusion right – could thus be essential for conservation.

The fear that forest conversion and degradation will continue apace under community tenure has served to justify not only state forest regulation but also sometimes heavy restrictions on forest use accompanying forest tenure reforms. As discussed in the next chapter, conservation interests continue to propose solutions that still sometimes remove people from protected areas, but many people believe that governments have failed to maintain forests and that conservation cannot work if local people don’t ‘buy in’.

The use of land and forest resources has played out differently in the three main regions of the developing world and set the stage for reforms under different sets of parameters. For example, population densities in Asia contrast with the vast expanses of forest per household of the lowland forests of the Amazon. The nature of colonialism was different in Latin America and ended far longer ago. Ongoing wars and population movements mark present-day Africa. At the same time, the historical centralization of forests – and denial of community rights – is common to all, as are ongoing deforestation and forest degradation. Remote forests have remained largely under customary practices and are somewhat protected from outside pressure. All three regions are experimenting with granting new forest tenure rights to local communities and each will be considered briefly in turn.

In Asia, the failures of centralized ownership and management of forests led to a rethinking of forest management and tenure policies in many countries as early as the 1970s. China, Nepal, Thailand and the Philippines banned timber exports; several countries placed heavy regulations on industrial concessions (Adhikari, 2007). At times, timber concessions were cancelled or not renewed, sometimes causing a shift to plantation forestry, as in Indonesia. The emphasis on wood production shifted to plantations and in several countries up to 90 per cent of raw material is now supplied from trees outside natural forests (Enters et al, 2003).

Policy-makers in India and Nepal observed that denying local communities access and management rights to forests worked as a disincentive, exacerbating forest degradation, conflicts and poverty. India, Nepal and the Philippines led Asia in introducing policies aimed at formally involving local communities in forest management; other countries (e.g. Laos) followed. Policies in Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam are still in their formative stages (Gilmour et al, 2004) but have emphasized the recovery of degraded forests. Countries with ample forest resources demonstrate patterns different from those with either seriously degraded or less valuable forests. In particular, Asian governments have been less likely to recognize local rights if the country has rich forest resources.

In Africa, statutory forest tenure is characterized by almost exclusive public admini stration: 98 per cent of forests are under the formal control and management of government authority (see Figure 1.2). Even in ‘state-owned’ forests, however, customary authorities, law and practices (as in Asia) play a significant role in local governance and resource access. Forest policies, specifically, have been reformed in the vast majority of countries since 1990, and in a single decade, ‘more than 30 countries launched at least one significant ground initiative towards community participation in local forest management’ (Alden Wily, 2004). Nevertheless, governments generally retain most of the decision-making power for forest management either through exclusive control of forests or by granting only non-commercial user rights to satisfy the needs of local people for forest products. Forestry sector reforms have been driven primarily by decentralization policies (see Chapter 2), as well as some community forestry initiatives.

Figure 1.2 Forest tenure distribution among three world regions, 2008

Source: RRI (2009)

Of the three regions, Latin America has the smallest portion of land under government ownership and management (33 per cent) and the largest in the hands of private individuals and firms (34 per cent). The area owned by communities, 25 per cent, is similar to Asia, and an additional 8 per cent is public land designated for community use (see Figure 1.2). In this region, Mexico is at the forefront of community forestry. Agrarian policies dating to the Mexican revolution and granting land rights in subsequent waves over much of the 20th century laid the foundation for community rights to forests, and ‘a vigorous community forestry sector emerged beginning in the 1970s’ (Bray et al, 2006). A community forestry pilot project, known as the Plan Piloto Forestal, was launched in Quintana Roo in the early 1980s (Salas, 1995) and by the 1990s community forestry was widespread in other parts of Mexico as well (Bray et al, 2005).

In most of Latin America, recent changes in tenure were the result of grass roots struggles. Indigenous peoples have sought the recognition of their ancestral domains, as have numerous non-indigenous populations, such as rubber tappers in Brazil. These groups have historically lived in and maintained forests despite both state intervention and pressures from competing land claimants: sometimes poor, landless peasants, and sometimes wealthier, agro-industrial or logging interests. Reforms in Latin America are more likely to involve the demarcation and titling of large indigenous territories, with large expanses of land for relatively few people (Stocks, 2005).

Research sites

Our research project emerged from interest in understanding the tenure changes that were taking place around the globe, with the goal of catalysing efforts to advance local control and management of forests. This involved promoting research and action across multiple scales, as well as various adaptations of the methods and choice of research sites across countries based on the different types of reforms and on the more action- and policy-oriented goals. Scoping allowed us to scout out the most appropriate locations for both research and action goals, as well as to find experienced and knowledgeable partners.

The central analysis took place in ‘research sites’, usually multiple villages, where a change in tenure or resource rights had occurred, or was about to take place. Sites were chosen not only to explore tenure changes but also based on apparent opportunity to deepen rights or affect policy decisions. In Latin America, the research sites tended to be large areas of 1 million to 2 million ha because reforms were based in specific regions around large territories. In Africa and Asia, the sites were much smaller but still involved multiple villages or communities organized around a specific forest.

The research involved scaling both downwards and upwards from each site. At the more local scale, it was aimed at examining socially and economically differentiated access to forest resources, institutional processes and mechanisms for sharing benefits within and among communities under tenure reform. In addition to providing the basis for collecting specific data, our work was aimed at informing strategies and processes for enhancing the rights and livelihood security of vulnerable groups, as well as increasing institutional capacities and leadership skills within grassroots organizations, federations and movements. This was intended to enable these actors better to represent and articulate the interests and prior...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures, Tables and Boxes
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• PART I. Introduction
• PART II. The Transfer of Tenure Rights
• PART III. Governance Institutions: Authority Relations and Social Movements
• PART IV. Regulations and Markets for Forest Products
• PART V. Outcomes and Conclusions
• References
• Contributors
• List of Acronyms
• Index