Community and industrial forest concessions: Are they effective at reducing forest loss and does FSC certification play a role?

Abstract

This paper examines the role of community forest management coupled with mandatory forest certification in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR). Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification aims to promote sustainable forest practices and increase economic returns for harvesting certified timber through price premiums gained through eco-labeling and specialized access to international markets. Guatemala established community and industrial forest concessions in the reserve as a way to stem rampant deforestation in the region in the 1990s. Concessions are required to obtain FSC certification to maintain their harvesting rights to the forest. The communities that manage the concessions vary across a number of cultural and socio-demographic characteristics, such as income, educational attainment, and previous forest experience. Some community concession members have lived in the region for multiple generations and have historically depended on the forest for their livelihoods, while other groups are comprised of more recent migrants that come primarily from agricultural backgrounds. The differences among the community forest groups, along with the private industrial concessions, allow for a robust examination of the impact of forest certification across different institutional approaches to forest management. Using Hansen’s forest loss data from 2000 to 2017 for Guatemala, we employ a random effects model to compare the effectiveness of the community and industrial concessions in reducing deforestation compared to a matched control group. Additionally, we test whether the benefit of increased market access that comes with FSC certification further decreases deforestation. Our findings suggest that sustainable forest management practices have continued to reduce forest loss in the MBR, just as well, if not more so than the industrial concessions, but the impact varies based on community characteristics. The market access component of FSC certification also impacts deforestation, although the effect is small.