Outcomes of reforms for livelihoods, forest condition and equity

Abstract

Are tenure reforms improving local people’s livelihoods and conserving the forest? To what extent is it possible for tenure reform to achieve the two goals simultaneously? What are the implications of these reforms for equity? This chapter provides insights into these questions by assessing the outcomes of the reforms in our case studies and discussing why and under what conditions they have resulted in improvements or deterioration.Livelihoods, forest condition and equity are also affected by other changes, broadly associated with increasing urbanization, agricultural development, industrialization and technological transformation. Tenure reform is only one of several processes shaping outcomes. In this chapter, however, we try to isolate the effects of the reforms, based on the assumption that the nature of tenure rights – e.g. tenure security and the specifi c locally relevant components of the ‘bundle of rights’ – shapes the decisions people make concerning forest resource use. The reforms, therefore, are likely to have signifi cant implications for the livelihoods of people who depend on forest resources and for the ways in which forest resources are used.There is substantial literature, only briefl y alluded to here, on the associ-ations between security of tenure and improvements in livelihoods and incomes. But much of this literature (e.g. Deininger and Binswanger, 2001) is based on situations regarding private, individual titles – not the norm in forest tenure reform. More relevant for forests is the common property literature, which has consistently demonstrated that livelihood benefi ts are more likely to result from secure common property rights (Pagdee et al, 2006). Still, there remains uncertainty about the actual benefi ts, for both communities and forests, which