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Section: Home > News and Events > PENEWS 2007-4 (December): Making sense out of 294 150 questionnaire pages
PENEWS 2007-4 (December): Making sense out of 294 150 questionnaire pages
CONTENT:
… at year end … PEN in figures from 1 to 17 348 734 Good reading on climate change and deforestation (REDD) Two PEN studies on Senegal – that is decentralizing, and on
China – where everything is changing … and welcome to the rat!
1. … At year end …
The end of a year is the time for stock taking: what went well during the
past year, what went wrong, what should be our new-year wishes and promises?
2007 was the year when:
* PEN grew from big to even bigger (see next section);
* PEN secured its financial base through three successful funding applications;
* All PEN partners put in hours, days, weeks and months of very hard work, and
these efforts form the backbone of PEN.
The transition from 2007 to 2008 also marks a gradual move from the first to the
second phase of PEN. The first phase was the development of the research tools,
fieldwork and data collection. While a few studies have just started and will be
carried well into 2008, the door for new ones is now closed. The second phase is
about how to make sense of the 294 150 questionnaire pages that have been
collected! It’s not a trivial task, and there are plenty of examples of large
data collections that were unable to fully exploit the data they collected. We
should, nevertheless, be optimistic that PEN will succeed because of its
financial, human and social capital. PEN should not just become the largest data
collection effort on poverty and forest (environmental) income but also among
the most significant efforts in terms of research results and policy influence.
The recent public focus on the role of tropical forests and deforestation in
global climate change provides a great opportunity that PEN must exploit.
The new PEN year starts off on 8. January with the opening of the 4th workshop
in Barcelona, with approx. 45 participants. It will officially launch the second
phase, and also be the first opportunity to get (almost) all PEN partners
together. Welcome to the year of the rat!
2. PEN in figures from 1 to 17 348 734
The core of PEN is the tropics-wide collection of high-quality household and
village level data. Here are the estimated (!) key figures:
1 overall project, but each of the
partner projects has a distinct flavour;
2 phases: data collection and data analysis/writing/dissemination;
3 continents, with a reasonable balance between the three;
4 quarterly surveys over a year, ensuring short recalls;
5 thematic groups: livelihoods, local management, markets, deforestation,
payment for env. services;
6 year project (2004-2011);
7 workshops and conferences to be held (at least);
26 countries of fieldwork;
38 PEN studies;
239 households in the average study;
364 villages or communities surveyed (uncertain);
2 313 data fields (variables) in the average study;
9 100 households surveyed;
40 950 household visits by PEN enumerators;
456 546 data cells (numbers) in the average study;
294 150 questionnaire pages filled out and entered (poor enumerators!);
17 348 734 data cells in the PEN global data base!
3. Good reading: Alvarado and Wertz-Kanounnikoff: Why are we seeing REDD?
Never short of catchy acronyms, the international debate on the environment
has a new member, RED(D): Reduced Emissions from Deforestation (and
Degradation). The recent climate summit in Bali agreed to work further on the
inclusion of REDD into a climate agreement. The arguments for including REDD are
strong: About 28 % of global CO2 emissions are from deforestation, forestry is
the largest emitter excluded from the Kyoto agreement, and reduced emissions are
apparently cheap compared with other sectors. But, “cheap” does not mean
“simple”, and including REDD will not be easy in spite of the good will that
exists. There are technical challenges (baselines, monitoring, additionality,
leakage), and political hurdles due to different and often conflicting interests
among the parties. To get on top of the debate, an excellent overview is given
by Laura Ximena Rubio Alvarado and Sheila Wertz-Kanounnikoff in their IDDRI
report: Why are we seeing "REED"? An analysis of the international debate on
reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries,
available at:
http://www.iddri.org/Publications/Collections/Analyses/An_0702_Rubio&Wertz_REDD.pdf
4. PEN PROJECT 1: Marie Therese Yaba Ndiaye: Forest Decentralization and Livelihoods in Senegal
In a bid to reduce environmental degradation and rural poverty, the
Senagalese government started in 1998 promogating new forestry laws empowering
rural populations to manage forests. My doctoral and PEN research looks at the
impact of the decentralization of forest management on the forests health and
the livelihoods of local communities living near those forests. The research
adresses three main questions: (1) What is the potential contribution of NTFPs
to the livelihoods of those living near dry forests? (2) How has forest
decentralization affected local livelihoods? (3) How has decentralization
affected the health of forests?
My research employs both spatial and temporal comparison with a focus on the
Keur Samba Dia State forest and Sambande Community Forest, which were managed in
a centralized manner by the Forestry Service prior to 1998. In 1998 Keur Samba
Dia was brought under co-management with the Forestry Service while Sambande
Forest was brought under community management. By examining the two forests
before and after the changes I assess two things: the difference that
decentralization made; and the impact of different levels of decentralization.
Practically, I led a team of three research assistants to collect
quantitative and qualitative data during field research from October 2006 to
September 2007. We visited a total of 140 households in 5 villages. One of the
biggest challenges we faced was that the last round coincided with the planting
season and so respondents were not easily available for the survey. The other
challenge was maintaining respondent interest. We did not offer material rewards
to respondents so this was really challenging. Finally, getting respondents to
put a monetary value on their benefits from the forest was also very
challenging.
Data entry and analysis are still ongoing. My preliminary analysis suggests
that the NTPFs are very essential for food security and to household incomes,
although not being the dominant source of income. Decentralization in both cases
seems to have caused forestry regeneration. I also found that the more thorough
decentralization in community forest the greater the difference. It also seems
that greater community consensus encourages greater compliance and reduces the
costs of enforcing decisions in the community forest, allowing for better
management and improved livelihoods.
5. PEN PROJECT 2: Nick Hogarth: The potential for natural resource based poverty alleviation in China– the case of bamboo in Tianlin County, Guangxi.
“The times they are a changing”….. Bob Dylan
Perhaps never before in history has a nation seen such rapid economic
development and social change like China has in the past 25 years; “11.5% growth
in the first three quarters of this year”, “foreign-exchange reserves of US$1.46
trillion”, “China to put man on the moon”. In economic size, China - the world's
fastest-growing major economy - is surpassed only by the U.S., Japan, Germany,
and France. This spectacular economic growth has contributed to an unprecedented
rise in living standards, with an estimated 300 million Chinese lifted out of
poverty in the last 20 years.
Such rapid growth is not without its costs, and the by-products are having a
catastrophic effect on the health and environment of the nation (and the
planet!). China still has >100 million people living below the poverty line, and
faces many other development challenges. The majority of the poor are ethnic
minorities living in remote, mountainous, and usually forested areas in western
China. This area is the focus of my research.
The aim of my research is to develop a detailed understanding of the role and
relationship of forests and forest-products in the livelihoods of the rural
poor. My focus is on bamboo, with the aim to determine its potential as a
natural resource for economic development and poverty alleviation. I am
investigating potential improvements in utilising existing bamboo resources, and
its expansion to improve farmers’ livelihoods.
I arrived in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi Province in October 2006, and
with the help of my research assistant/translator, I assembled a volunteer team
of 10 postgraduate students from Guangxi University who were trained in the PEN
research methods. I then established my field-site in a remote, mountainous and
impoverished county in northwest Guangxi, about 150km from the North Vietnamese
border. I built a relationship with the local government (especially the
Forestry Bureau), and trained 6 local forestry officers as enumerators.
240 households were randomly selected across 6 administrative villages. My
first survey (V1) began in December 2006, with the quarterly surveys (Q1)
beginning in January 2007. All surveys were completed in November 2007, and were
translated into English ready for data entry. In addition to the PEN surveys, I
have conducted numerous interviews of key informants in the bamboo industry. I
am now working on finishing data entry, and planning follow-up field-trips to
fill the inevitable gaps.
Initial observations indicate that most households are predominantly
agrarian, but all use forest products to varying degrees; from just firewood to
almost total reliance on forest derived products. Natural forest use is minimal,
mainly due to central government forest policies restricting their use.
Plantation grown forest products including bamboo, timber, and oil nuts are very
important. Trickle-down effects from the economic boom include infrastructure
improvements (roads, dams, electricity), increased off-farm income
opportunities, education improvements, expanding markets for forestry and
agricultural products.
6. Goodbye pig, welcome rat!
 PEN partner Nick Hogarth (above) shared some photos from his fieldwork in
China including this one, and reminded us that according to the Chinese
calendar, 2007 was the year of the pig. Pigs have fun and enlightening
personalities with patience and understanding. They cared about others, so much
that they will do just about anything for a friend in need. Maybe that friend in
2007 was the global environment.
As we look ahead, 2008 is the year of the rat. Apparently, rats are keen and
unapologetic promoters of their own agendas. But, according to Wikipedia, rats
are also “charming, passionate, charismatic, practical and hardworking, …,
endowed with great leadership skills and are perhaps the most organized and
systematic of the twelve signs.” That’s certainly needed if we are to make sense
out of the 294 150 PEN questionnaire pages in 2008.
Best wishes for the new year,
Arild Angelsen, PEN coordinator
Ronnie Babigumira, PEN Research Fellow
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