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Section: Home > News and Events > PENEWS 2/2007: The Money has Arrived!
PENEWS 2007-2 (June): DOES DECENTRALIZATION
HELP THE POOR & FORESTS?
CONTENT:
Updates Wanted: PEN Research fellow Workshop in Barcelona in January 2008 First PEN-based PhD thesis completed Good readings on PES A key PEN question is whether forest decentralization
benefit local livelihoods and forest conservation: Two PEN
partner projects in Africa share some preliminary findings
1. UPDATES
Since last PENEWS (March 2007), four new PEN partners have started their
fieldwork: Bolier Torres (Ecuador), Sugato Dutt (India), Dao Huy Giap (Vietnam),
and Bjorn Schulte-Herbruggen (Ghana). They bring the total number of PEN
partners that have started fieldwork to 28.
The efforts to recruit the last PEN partners now concentrate on regions
where PEN-coverage is weak, and include Burkina Faso, DRC, Brazil and Indonesia.
The PEN Web-page http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/pen/ has received a modest face
lift. One change is to use the front page for regular news updates. News
articles from fieldwork etc. are very welcome!
The PEN database team (Ramadhani (Dani) Achdiawan, Ronnie Babigumira and
Betty Abang) are currently working on a system for aggregating data from the
individual PEN studies, e.g., calculating figures for household income by
sector. A beta version of the system (a set of do-files in Stata) should be
available by August.
2. WANTED: PEN Research Fellow for statistical analysis
CIFOR is looking for a PEN Research Fellow. The position is for 2.5 years,
starting in October-November 2007. The candidates should have at least a Master
degree (PhD is preferable) in economics or social science, with a specialization
and strong record in statistical/econometric analysis. The duties of the
research fellow will include: (1) Establish and manage the PEN global data base;
(2) Undertake statistical and econometric analysis on the global data base, and
assist PEN researchers doing such analysis; (3) Advise PEN partners in their
data analysis; and (4) Participate in the overall management and coordination of
PEN. The application deadline is 15. July 2007. More information is found at:
http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/Careers/Global/pen_researcher.htm
Please forward this information to potential candidates!
3. PEN workshop in Barcelona (Spain) in January 2008
The next PEN workshop will be held 7. - 13. January 2008 in Barcelona, Spain.
CIFOR is collaborating with ICTA of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (and
PEN resource person Victoria Reyes García) in organizing the workshop, while
funding is provided through the DFID- project. The workshop will launch the
second phase of the PEN project (data analysis), and will also become the first
opportunity to get all PEN partners together. More information will follow soon,
but PEN partners should mark this date in their calendars now.
While the first three PEN workshops (2004-2006) focused on fieldwork methods
and data collection, this one is to focus on data analysis. The detailed
programme is yet to be worked out, but the workshop will have two main parts:
Analysis of the individual data sets: checking data, developing good
hypotheses, and – as a major part – hands-on sessions using Stata to undertake
various types of statistical analyses. PEN thematic and global analyses: Presentation of findings from selected
PEN studies, developing a set of global hypotheses to be tested, methods to be
used, etc.
4. FIRST PEN-based PhD thesis completed
Jose Pablo Prado Córdova became the first PEN partner to complete his PhD
thesis. On 23. May 2007 at the Copenhagen University he successfully defended
his thesis entitled “Conservation by cultivation: Linkages between an endangered
endemic fir (Abies guatemalensis Rehder) and peasant economies in the western
highlands of Guatemala”. A major thesis of the project was that the cultivation
of this fir species for Christmas tree production would both stop poaching from
natural forests and increase income of rural communities. The PEN survey
demonstrated, however, that the species had a relatively modest importance
within local livelihoods strategies, mainly due to the existing ban on its
extraction from natural stands. But several initiatives and opportunities for
commercialisation at the national level can raise the income significantly.
Moreover, a number of associated forest goods and services, such as the
extraction of firewood and litter, supply of drinking water and protection
against landslides, were found to be highly relevant for the subsistence farming
systems in the highlands of Guatemala.
Pablo will in July return to his position as a full time lecturer at the
University of San Carlos of Guatemala, where he will be based at the Department
of Social Sciences and Rural Development at the Faculty of Agronomy.
5. GOOD READING: Everything you ever wanted to know about PES but never dared to
ask
Payment for Environmental Services (PES) is not just one of the recent
international buzz-words; it is increasingly also forming the basis for new
conservation (and development) projects. What is PES, and does it deliver? Two
papers by CIFOR (and PEN) scientist Sven Wunder answer these questions: In the
first paper “The Efficiency of Payments for Environmental Services in Tropical
Conservation”, available at
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2006.00559.x?cookieSet=1
gives a basic introduction to the issues. Wunder defines PES as “a voluntary,
conditional agreement between at least one “seller” and one “buyer” over a
well-defined environmental service”, and he argues that such schemes are “best
suited to scenarios of moderate conservation opportunity costs on marginal lands
and in settings with emerging, not-yet realized threats.”
The second paper discusses a series of critical questions that have been
raised about PES: “Are Direct Payments for Environmental Services Spelling Doom
for Sustainable Forest Management in the Tropics?” For example: does PES reduce
the freedom of the local inhabitants by turning them into passive recipients of
large conservation rents without true incentives to development and progress in
life? Such fears are, according to Wunder, based on a totally unrealistic
scenario for PES recipients, and he concludes that PES should be part of the
conservation toolbox.
Interested readers are also referred to the CIFOR PES Web page at:
http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/pes/_ref/home/index.htm
6. PEN PROJECT 1: Pam Jagger, Indiana University, US:
Negotiating Livelihoods and Sustainability after Uganda's Forest Sector
Governance Reform
This has been an exciting year to work on forestry related issues in Uganda:
controversy over the sale of one quarter of a biodiverse forest reserve to large
scale sugar producers, and the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of State Meeting
which has led to a massive construction boom has everyone talking about trees!
My research has examined the case of a major forest sector decentralization
reform undertaken by the Ugandan government in 2003 which changed the ownership
and management of 85% of Uganda's forests. Specifically it addresses three
research questions:
How has the governance reform that shifted forest management from the
Forest Department to the National Forest Authority (NFA) and the District Forest
Service (DFS) affected peoples' ability to negotiate access rights to forest
products? How has the governance reform affected the livelihoods of rural Ugandans
living near forests? How has the governance reform affected forest cover and forest quality?
The research builds upon a study of the contribution of forests to
livelihoods conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) immediately
prior to the forest sector reform in 2003. The three field sites represent
variable governance regimes and forest types in Uganda including: protected
afromontane forest in Rwenzori National Park (managed by the Uganda Wildlife
Authority (UWA)); privately held tropical high forest south of Bugoma Central
Forest Reserve (managed by the DFS); and protected tropical high forest in
Budongo Central Forest Reserve (managed by the NFA). There has been no change in
the governance of the Rwenzori site; this site is used as a control group in the
study. In each of the three study areas 6 communities and 180 households were
visited. The total sample size is 18 communities and approximately 540
households.
There is a lot of confusion and variation with respect to how people view
their rights to access forest and forest products. There is also a lot of
confusion within and between representatives of both the UWA and the NFA and the
communities that they work with. In many cases, unless a clear collaborative
forest management agreement has been worked out, households are negotiating
access rights on an individual basis with UWA and NFA staff. This is likely
leading to inequalities between households, further corruption within these
organizations, and it is definitely contributing to the frequency of illegal
harvesting.
Data entry from the first quarter household surveys is almost complete. This
has enabled me to do some very preliminary estimates of the share of household
income from forest products. What the data indicate is that the contribution of
forest products to household income has been stable in the Rwenzori field site
(26 % both in 2003 and 2006), which is the area that did not undergo any
governance reform. In the Bugoma site there has been a slight decline from 19 to
17 %, and in the Budongo site a slight increase in the contribution of forests
to household incomes (9 to 13 %). The decline in the Bugoma field site may be
due to intensive forest clearing in that area; people have to travel farther to
access forests. In the Budongo field site the increase may be due to more
intensive timber harvesting by local people. In-migration from conflict ridden
West Nile province has brought many timber cutters to the area. Also,
smallholders who had been planting tobacco shifted to timber harvesting when
British American Tobacco failed to buy their crop in 2004. However, virtually
all of timber harvested in the Budongo field site is illegally harvested. My
feeling is that these results are too preliminary to draw any meaningful
conclusions. It will be important to look at data from other quarters, and also
to thoroughly clean the data.
Data on changes in forest cover and forest quality have not been analyzed
yet. Based upon qualitative observation, both forest cover and forest quality in
Rwenzori field site appear to be relatively stable. Though forest clearing is
ongoing, the area cleared is relatively small, and enforcement of activities in
Rwenzori Mountains National Park is very strong. In the Bugoma field site forest
are being cleared at a rapid rate for agricultural production. Even during my
nine months of fieldwork significant forest cover loss has been observed. Forest
quality is also declining in this area due to intensive pit-sawing by migrant
laborers working for large scale sawnwood producers based in Kampala. In the
Budongo area forest quality is declining due to pit-sawing by households living
in communities immediately adjacent to the forest. Forests outside of the
Reserve are also declining with respect to cover and quality due to agricultural
expansion and timber production by local people, though not as rapidly as in the
Bugoma area.
Based on the preliminary findings, the general picture seems to be that the
forest sector reform has had a mixed effect on local livelihoods, and has in
general negatively affected forest sustainability. The findings contradict the
majority of the literature on decentralization which predicts that decentralized
forest sector governance leads to both improved livelihoods and the more
sustainable use of forests.
7. PEN PROJECT 2: Charles Jumbe, University of Malawi:
Local forest management, asset accumulation, and poverty in Malawi
This PEN project will survey the same households that were included a survey
undertaken in 2002 for my PhD thesis, thus creating a valuable panel data set.
It will enable analysis of asset accumulation, poverty dynamics, pathways out of
poverty, and the role of forests in these processes. The two study areas are
pilot areas for forest co-management (FCM) in Malawi, and the second focus is
therefore on the impact of FCM on local livelihoods and forest conservation. The
project is being undertaken by the Centre for Agricultural Research and
Development (CARD), a research wing of Bunda College of Agriculture, one of five
colleges of University of Malawi.
The study sites are Machinga Forest Reserve in the Southern Region and
Chimaliro Forest Reserve in the Central Region. A total of 400 households (200
from each site) in 39 villages are included. The villages in Chimaliro are
smaller than in Machinga, with average populations of 298 and 479, respectively.
In Chimaliro, the villages are mainly composed of extended families, and it is
common to find some families coming together to form their own village as time
passes. The villages in Machinga have a heterogeneous composition of families
with a diverse ethnic and cultural background.
The research team will undertake the last survey round in July. The biggest
challenge in implementing the survey has been the absent households in the
second and third rounds. In Machinga, the second phase coincided with a large
number of villagers working temporarily on rice farms in the neighbouring
district of Zomba. In other cases the respondents simply said they did not want
to be ‘bothered’ again. Any systematic biases in drop outs will be analyzed
through the Attrition and Temporary Absence Survey.
The data are yet to be entered and analyzed, and the results are therefore
preliminary. But, field observations suggest that a major impact of
decentralization has been to facilitate the
process of local organization and influence in the way forests are managed.
Chimaliro presents a unique example of how local influence make people
participate in local forest management despite that the tangible benefits from
sustainable management are quite small. The geographical remoteness and the
cultural fabric of the tribes have enabled Chimaliro forest reserve to
rejuvenate and recover from deforestation that occurred at the dawn of
multiparty democracy in 1994. One of the hypotheses
yet to be tested is that the better management in Chimaliro has resulted in
higher forest income now compared with the 2002 survey. But, bumper crops in
2005/2006 and 2006/2007 are likely to have lowered the demand for forest
products, and that might affect the overall results.
In Machinga, which had much higher levels of forest dependence and also a
more severe state of forest degradation in 2002, our hypothesis is that forest
degradation eventually will severely constrain forest income. But, the situation
might not have changed dramatically over the last 4-5 years: most households are
land-poor and even with good rains and subsidized fertilizers, most households
are not able to produce enough staple food, and will therefore still be looking
to the forest for their “daily bread, butter and peas”.
Best regards,
Arild Angelsen
PEN coordinator
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