Partitioning Commons and Devolving Them from Communal to Sub-Communal Groups: Evidence from China’s Community Forest Management Organizations

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Existing research has extensively explored various approaches to enhancing the governance of community-managed commons; however, limited studies have discussed whether it is effective to partition commons and devolve them from communal to smaller, sub-communal groups. We examine this question based on the evidence from two common-property timber production communities that devolved their forests from the administrative village to villagers’ groups in Fujian, China. Using the comparative case study method, we explore the mechanisms by which this organizational restructuring affected democratic governance, revenue allocation and economic efficiency of timber production. We find that by decreasing the size of forest management units, the restructuring increases the participation of ordinary villagers in community forestry and enhances the equity of revenue allocation. However, physically partitioning forests may undermine scale economies, and the small, sub-communal forest management groups tend to have weak financial and managerial capacities. Thus, partitioning forests into villagers’ groups threatens the long-run efficiency of commercial timber production. This research not only presents an innovative toolkit of enhancing community forest management but also sheds light on the optimal organizational structure of community forest management under different organizational goals and contexts.