Fair ways to share benefits from community forests? How commodification is associated with reduced preference for equality and poverty alleviation

Adrian Martin,Iokiñe Rodríguez,Mirna Inturias,Jun He,Bereket Kebede,Nicole Gross-Camp

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab114f

Abstract

This research is concerned with the trend towards commodification of forestry, in the context of community forest governance for sustainable development in the tropics. In these contexts, commodification takes different forms, including sales of certified timbers and sales of carbon credits. In addition to the general aim to enhance income, these market-based forestry interventions typically aim to align with sustainable development agendas, including (a) safeguarding ecological integrity and (b) promoting poverty alleviation. Our concern here is that the process of forest commodification might lead to a shift in local norms of benefit-sharing, in ways that can hinder these key components of sustainable development goals. We report the results of a survey (N = 519) conducted across sites in Bolivia, China and Tanzania that shows that switching from non-monetary to monetary benefits is associated with changes in preferences for distributional fairness in ways that may be detrimental to the poor. In particular, we show that forest commodification is associated with a lower likelihood of selecting pro-poor or egalitarian approaches to benefit sharing and higher likelihood of selecting to distribute benefits in a way that rewards individual contributions or compensates losses.

Highlights

IntroductionIntroduction an usIn Antigone, the character Creon claims that ‘There’s nothing in the world so demoralising as money’ whilst D.H Lawrence observed that ‘Money poisons you when you’ve got it, and starves you when you haven’t’ (Lawrence, 1994 [1928])
Most academic research into this phenomena focuses on the institutional arrangements surrounding monetary exchange, identifying market exchange as a driver of declining social responsibility (Polanyi, 1944, Falk and Szech, 2013, Bartling et al, 2014, Sandel, 2012, Satz, 2010)
Recent research in psychology has suggested that disruption to social norms from exposure to monetary exchange can occur much more quickly and locally (Gneezy and Rustichini, 2000, Vohs et al, 2006, Vohs et al, 2008, Gino and Mogilner, 2014), with some studies suggesting that the mere priming of people with the idea of money induces preferences that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor (Caruso et al, 2013, Kouchaki et al, 2013)

Summary

Introduction

Introduction an usIn Antigone, the character Creon claims that ‘There’s nothing in the world so demoralising as money’ whilst D.H Lawrence observed that ‘Money poisons you when you’ve got it, and starves you when you haven’t’ (Lawrence, 1994 [1928]). In the context of environmental conservation, this raises concern because virtues associated with social responsibility, including compassion, reciprocity, trust and cooperation, are often essential requirements for successful environmental governance (Ostrom, 1990) and are widely held to be central requirements - or capabilities - for achieving human wellbeing (Nussbaum, 2011). To put this in a way that has underpinned mainstream environmentalism for at least three decades, social equity is a necessary condition for achieving sustainable development (WCED, 1987, Pearce et al, 1989, Holden et al, 2017). These include the marketing of forest timbers through forest certification and labelling schemes, payments for ecosystem services (PES)

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