Household characteristics and forest dependency: evidence from common property forest management in Nepal

Abstract

In resource dependent rural areas of developing countries, common property resource management has been considered as one of the most viable options for combining poverty reduction, enhancement of local level economic development and biodiversity conservation. The past decade has witnessed an increasing emphasis on community-based forest management, with transference of forest management responsibility into the hands of local communities. However, although community forestry (CF) has succeeded in halting resource degradation and conservation of biodiversity, the equity aspect of CF not been fully examined. Nepal is a good location for a case study to examine this question, as community forest programs have been in place longer than in many other countries. This study analyzes the relationship between key household characteristics and common property resources used in order to assess whether poorer households are able to gain greater access to community forests as a result of institutional change. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses suggest that forest product collection from community forests is dependent on various socio-economic variables. In general it appears that land and livestock holdings, caste, education of family members and household economic status exert a strong influence on appropriating benefits from the commons. Based on this analysis, it can be concluded that, at least for some key products, poorer households are currently facing more restricted access to community forests than ‘less poor’ or relatively better off households.

Introduction

Dependency of rural households on natural resources, coupled with the public nature of environmental goods, has meant that sustainable management of common pool resources (CPR) is an important topical issue. Spatial scale, and externality involved in their use, means that most irrigation systems, forests, rangelands, fisheries and other forms of CPR cannot be managed at the individual or household level (Meinzen-Dick and Knox, 1999). CPRs are usually characterized by costly exclusion, and typically there is rivalry in use: the resource is common to everyone who wants to exploit it, but the goods produced are private (Ostrom et al., 1999). In another words, a CPR has characteristics of both private and public goods since exclusion from using the resource is difficult, and joint use involves subtractability. Scholars of the commons, therefore, have indicated suboptimal outcomes of CPR held in an open access situation, arguing that resources will ultimately become depleted because of the temptation to free ride. As CPRs are characterized by the pervasiveness of a range of market and policy failures, community-based property rights over CPRs is considered to be the most viable option for both ecological and economic sustainability of the commons. Governments in more than 50 countries are now pursuing community forestry (CF) initiatives that provide some sort of local users control over the resources (Agrawal, 2001).

In Nepal, as in other developing countries, the development of community-based resource management has led to devolution of forest management from centralized government control to local user groups. This process has been continuing since the mid-1980s when national forests were progressively handed over to forest user groups (FUGs). Under this program, local villagers came together as a FUG and the government handed over certain sections of national forests as community forests, in which community had traditional use rights. After this landmark change, community-based forest management through FUGs has become an important policy for the forestry sector in Nepal. The Nepalese government's Ninth Plan has stressed the effective role of CF in poverty alleviation through its positive impact on local level economic development and biodiversity conservation. About 24% of potential forest areas had been handed over to 11000 FUGs (Acharya, 2002) by the end of 2001 in different parts of the country as CF, mainly in the Middle Hills. Most of the easily accessible forests are already under community-based management and the government is planning to hand over most of the potential community forests to local users by 2010.

Although the CF program has succeeded in halting the ongoing trend of deforestation, empirical evidence on equity and distributional benefits from CF management is rather mixed Adhikari, 2002a, Adhikari, 2002b, Kumar, 2002, Richards et al., 1999, Springate-Baginski et al., 1999. On one hand, researchers have described the positive impacts of the CF program on forest regeneration and improvement of the biophysical condition of forests, however, at the same time they have questioned the equity and welfare implications of institutional change Branney and Yadav, 1998, Das, 2000, Kumar, 2002. For instance, Das (2000) notes that much of the analysis of CPRs in the Himalayas has been concerned with village level institutions rather than individual incentives from the management of these resources. Meinzen-Dick and Knox (1999) point out that, ‘common property resources have not always been used more efficiently than under state management, nor have the benefits been distributed equitably’.

In her analysis of political ecology of CF in Nepal, Graner (1997) argued that the shift in forest management from state control to community ownership in Nepal, has not necessarily helped poor people, but has often worked to their disadvantage. In many cases, the poor are not included in the forest management decision-making body (i.e. forest users committee), as fuel wood sellers and other occupational households are not effectively represented in the operational regime, and so they lose their traditional access to forest resources. Further, CF programs are causing some households to have significant problems in meeting their needs particularly after enclosure of forest for regeneration (Springate-Baginski et al., 1999). This has particular significance for poorer households with little or no private land, as they are less likely to meet their needs from private resources. Cooke (2000) noted that imposition of common property management institutions in villages in Nepal was likely to result in reductions in consumption of key products from forests due to the changing forest management regime practiced in formal systems of management.

Unlike traditional systems of management³ there is a growing concern that cost-benefit sharing arrangements in formal systems of CF management are not equitable (Maharjan, 1993). In his study of factors influencing people's participation in forest management in Bihar, Hariyana and Uttar Pradesh of India, Lise (2000) also noted differences in access to forest resources with the poor dominating forest management in Uttar Pradesh and the rich in Hariyana. Scholars argue that clearly defined rights on CPRs are a necessary but not sufficient condition for equitable and sustainable resource use (Hanna and Munasinghe, 1995). An equitable system of resource management is often reported to be difficult because of the failure of CPR institutions to incorporate the diversity of interests and values among stakeholders (Hanna et al., 1995).

As discussed by Meinzen-Dick and Knox (1999), one possible reason for inequitable access to the resource base may be the fact that efficiency aspects of natural resource management have failed to recognize that resources often have multiple uses and that there tend to be sub-groups of users who are characterized by their use pattern. For example, the CF program in Nepal is primarily dictated by production of intermediate forest products⁴ (Richards et al., 1999) that can be utilized by households with land and livestock holdings, consequently marginalizing poorer households whose livelihoods are dependent on collection of non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Scholars have argued that socio-economic heterogeneity really matters in terms of CPR use and individual incentives to cooperate for collective action (Anderson and Ioris, 1992).

Though there is a large body of literature that describes overall success of CPR held under community ownership Bromley, 1991, Ostrom, 1990, Wade, 1988, to our knowledge, none of it explicitly addresses the equity aspects of collective action. Previous research on CF was confined to the allegedly value free efficiency condition claiming that questions involving distribution of resources are matters for the political process (Grand and Robinson, 1984). In this paper, we aim to provide an answer to the following question: What are the local level socio-economic consequences of the CF program, particularly the equity aspects of existing institutional set-ups? To answer this question we will ask whether (1) the ability to use CPR depends on heterogeneity and inequalities of communities created by private resource endowments of households; and (2) there are different levels of access to, and control over, common property resources by households with different socio-economic status. Since demand for, and ability to appropriate, biomass resources from the commons is primarily a function of household private endowments, it is further hypothesized that the rich or “less poor” are currently benefiting more (in terms of quantity harvested) from CF than relatively poorer households.

The paper is organized as follows. The next section describes the data collection and survey methods. A review the FUG rules and regulations, which govern the forest use and management in the study sites, is presented in Section 3. Section 4 presents a descriptive analysis of labor allocation and forest use pattern. Section 5 reports the empirical specifications of the econometric model and presents the results of the econometric analysis. Finally, the paper concludes in Section 6 with some conclusions and policy implications.