Promoting women’s leadership under environmental decentralization: The roles of domestic policy, foreign aid, and population change

Abstract

In recent decades, countries across Asia, Latin America, and Africa have adopted environmental decentralization reforms to encourage the community-based management of water, forests, fisheries, and other natural resources. While such reforms are meant to empower rural people to participate in environmental governance, experiences from recent decades suggest that these reforms often suffer from gendered inequalities in participation and leadership. We use the case of a forestry-sector decentralization reform in Nepal to test the importance of domestic policy, foreign aid, and population change for promoting women’s leadership under environmental decentralization. Using data on local natural resource governance committees formed in villages across the country under the reform, we find that a non-binding government guideline encouraging committees to prioritize women’s leadership resulted in an estimated increase of 7.5% points in the number of leadership seats held by women on these committees. We also show that locally-targeted, sector-specific foreign aid projects appear to have a strong impact, with rates of women’s leadership that are estimated to be 24% points higher in committees formed in areas with projects, compared to rates in comparable committees formed in areas without such projects at the time of formation. Finally, we instrument for international male out-migration in rural Nepal, and find no apparent effect of international male out-migration on rates of women’s leadership in local natural resource governance committees. The results highlight the importance of domestic policy, even without stringent enforcement, and targeted foreign aid projects for promoting women’s leadership under environmental decentralization.