Abstract
Devolution is a promising tool to enhance forest management. The literature has discussed many factors that affect the outcomes of forest devolution policies; however, insufficient attention has been paid to the role of exogenous socio-economic changes. Using the longitudinal case study method, we focus on how socio-economic changes affect the effectiveness of forest devolution policies using a case from Southeast China. We find that in this case, although forest devolution succeeded in granting farmers sufficient forest rights, it failed to incentivize farmers to contribute to managing forests because of the dramatic changes in socio-economic contexts. Economic development and outmigration reduced farmers’ dependence on forest income, elevated the costs of silvicultural operations, and posed market risks, thereby reducing farmers’ enthusiasm about managing forests; outmigration also weakened community leadership and impeded the collective action of making forest investments. Eventually, socio-economic changes compromised the positive stimulus caused by forest devolution and contributed to the collective action dilemma of managing forests after the reform. We argue that operationalizing forest devolution in developing countries needs to consider the exogenous socio-economic changes that may enhance or counteract the effects of devolution policies, and that more autonomy should be granted to communities to make policies adaptative to their local socio-economic dynamics.
Highlights
Forest tenure determines the types of resources that can be used, the actors that are eligible for using the resources under certain conditions, the duration of resource use, and the specific ways of using the resources [1]
Using the retrospective longitudinal case study method, we investigated how socio-economic changes counteracted the effectiveness of forest devolution policies and contributed to the collective action dilemma after the forest tenure reform
Time-series analyses and logic models were combined to understand how socio-economic changes affected the outcomes of forest devolution policies [26]
Summary
Forest tenure determines the types of resources that can be used, the actors that are eligible for using the resources under certain conditions, the duration of resource use, and the specific ways of using the resources [1]. Many developing countries have launched forest tenure reforms that aimed to devolve forest rights to local users [2]. These endeavors, which are often called forest devolution, exemplify the application of rights-based approaches in the forest sector [3]. The literature has shown that the outcomes of forest devolution policies depend on many factors such as whether the devolved rights are sufficient [1,6,8,9], whether the policy design has considered the complex power relations and interactions among local actors [10,11,12,13], and whether trade-offs exist between the multiple policy goals of forest devolution initiatives [6,10]
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