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Poverty Environmental Network (PEN) at the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC)

At the IASC Conference PEN partners highlighted their study of the importance of forests to the income portfolios of rural households.

Six PEN partners (Amy Duchelle, Pam Jagger, Charles Jumbe, Shah Raees Khan, Khaled Misbahuzzaman, and José Pablo Prado Córdova), PEN Coordinator Arild Angelsen, and PEN resource person William Sunderlin participated in the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC), held July 14-19, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK. This event marked the first presentation of PEN research at a major international conference.

The role of the IASC is to contribute new knowledge to understanding and improving institutions for the management of resources that are (or could be) held or used collectively.

In recent years forests have figured prominently in the discourse of the association. The theme of the 12th Biennial Conference was connecting local experience with global challenges. PEN promises to do just that by bringing together detailed data from over 30 studies focused on local conditions and synthesizing trends and policy challenges for poverty alleviation and forest management. Papers were presented in two consecutive panels organized around the themes of: tenure and property rights, and forests and livelihoods.

Papers by Jagger (Uganda), Jumbe (Zambia) and Misbahuzzaman (Bangladesh) highlighted the relative importance of forests to the income portfolios of rural households. Several policies were addressed by these studies including: the failure of Uganda’s decentralization reform to improve forest incomes for the rural poor; linkages between macroeconomic trends and forest income in Zambia; and the influence of village common forests on rural livelihoods in Bangladesh.

Understanding the nuanced nature of access rights to resources and conveying the complexity of these institutions to policy makers was also a central theme of the conference. In the low income tropics, the majority of forests are held privately or by the state. Data from PEN illustrate the relative importance of access to forest products held under various tenure regimes.

The influence of contested or insecure property rights on rural livelihoods was highlighted in papers Khan (Pakistan), and Prado Córdova (Guatemala). Duchelle in a comparative study of Brazil nut harvesting in Brazil and Bolivia linked insecure property rights to livelihood strategies, and demonstrated the potential for participatory mapping to resolve conflicts over access rights.

In addition to the formal proceedings of the conference PEN partners met informally to discuss the challenges of data entry and cleaning, job prospects, the virtues of British beer, and other PEN business. PEN is grateful to Pam Jagger for organizing the panels, and PEN partners and resource persons are encouraged to coordinate panels at other professional meetings.