1.
COMMUNITY FORESTRY
WHERE AND WHY HAS DEVOLUTION OF FOREST RIGHTS
CONTRIBUTED TO BETTER GOVERNANCE AND
LIVELIHOODS?
Steven Lawry
Director, Equal Opportunities, Gender, Justice, and Tenure, CIFOR
29 August 2017

2.
What’s meant by
“Community Forestry?”
• Community Forestry (CF)
programs began with a focus on
involving communities in
government programs for
reforestation and forest
protection.
• CF programs have gradually
evolved towards more-devolution
of use and management rights,
and more active use of forests by
the local communities.

3.
• Greater devolution of rights has
been promoted by rights groups
and donors, arguing that by
assigning greater governance
responsibility and clear use and
management rights to
communities, environmental and
livelihoods outcomes might be
better.
• Developing country governments
have for the most part been
ambivalent about rights
devolution, with a few notable
exceptions.

4.
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
• The geography of rights devolution
• Research findings on Community Forestry (CF)
“success factors”
• The significance of property rights
• Forest rights reforms in Mexico, Nepal and Guatemala
• A model of the investment effects of rights devolution
• The future of community forestry

5.
The geography
of rights devolution

6.
The Forest Tenure Transition in Latin America*
Percent Area
by Tenure Type
*Source: Hatcher and Bailey, 2011.
(8 countries; 82% of Latin
America’s tropical forests).

7.
Key Features of Forest Reform in Latin America
• Forestlands are demarcated and titled as collective or communal properties;
States retain alienation rights
• Titles require retention of forest cover
• Emphasis has been on transferring rights to indigenous and ethnic communities
• Social mobilization by Indigenous peoples and civil society - key in promoting and
ensuring tenure reform implementation, monitoring the progress and defending
the rights:
▪ In Peru, over 10 million hectares titled to about 2,000 native communities,
around 20% of national forest area.
• Considerable diversity in tenure models:
▪ Indigenous territories, extractive reserves, agro-extractive and forestry
settlements, community concessions, e.g. Guatemala

8.
The Forest Tenure Transition in Africa*
Percent Area
by Tenure Type
* Source: Hatcher and Bailey, 2011
Tropical Forest Tenure Assessment.
(Data for 8 countries, representing
84% of African tropical forests).

9.
Key Lesson from Africa
Benefit-Sharing Arrangements Fall Short, User Groups Receive
Limited Use Rights
• Focus on benefit sharing arrangements, funded for instance by REDD+ PES schemes,
administered by public or nonprofit organizations exercising discretion over terms and
benefits.
• Benefit-sharing schemes are often expensive to administer and generate high transaction
costs for government agencies and village participants alike, and rely on continuation of
donor funding
• Also, some focus on establishment of local forest user and conservation groups, licensed
to exercise limited use rights in return for conservation services.
• For instance, Kenya’s Forest Act of 2005 provides for establishment of Community Forest
Associations. Registration requires detailed management plans specifying conservation
program and permitted extractive activities. CFA management plan approval process
faces delays.

10.
The Forest Tenure Transition in Asia*
Percent Area
by Tenure Type
* Hatcher and Bailey, 2011
(8 countries; 90% of Asian
tropical forests but does
not include India or the
Philippines).
Major approaches:
Benefits sharing, rights
recognition, individual and
household allotments

11.
Key Lessons from Asia
• Variety of approaches
• Nepal’s 1993 forest rights devolution to Community Forest User Groups (20,000
CFUGs covering 25% of Nepal) believed to have contributed to significant increases in
forest cover, but livelihood outcomes are mixed or uncertain. Significance of large
rural labor out-migration as factor reducing pressure on forests not understood.
• India’s Joint Forest Management (JFM) rationale: communities protect forests from
fire, illegal grazing, timber cutting, in exchange for use of non-timber forest products
(NWFPs). Disparities between states in success & failure. (Patra). Nationalization of
NWFP markets reducing returns to beneficiaries.
• Vietnam. Forest Land Allocation (FLA) program grants up to 50 ha of land to families
for afforestation.
• Indonesia is attempting to devolve use and management rights to some indigenous
communities, subject to approved plans and strict use conditions. Implementation
slowed by heavy planning requirements.

12.
Types of Forest Rights Models by Region

13.
Community Forestry success
factors

14.
CFG SUCCESS
Factors explaining failure or success of community
forestry tend to interact in complex ways
Modified version from
Baynes, et al (2015)

15.
“Key factors which influence the success
of community forestry
in development countries”
1. Secure property (tree and land) rights
(necessary)
2. Material benefits to community
members (necessary)
3. Socio-economic status and gender
based inequality
4. Intra-community forest user group
governance
5. Government support
Baynes, et al, 2015, Key factors which influence the success of community
forestry in developing countries, Global Environmental Change, 35, 226–238

16.
The significance
of property rights

17.
Baynes, et al 2015 apply Schlager and
Ostrom’s (1992) schema of a ‘bundle of
rights’ in which security increases with
the duration of tenure in which
occupants may
1. access land and withdraw
resources from it,
2. manage and improve the land,
3. exclude others from it and
4. sell or lease it.
“As these rights are
lost, security of tenure
decreases and
peoples’ motivation
for community forestry
is subsequently
reduced.”
Baynes, et al, 2015
The significance of property rights

18.
Governments only partially devolve
management rights, reducing tenure security
• “The lessons which may be extracted from the literature are that both secure
land and tree tenure, provided either through government or extra-legal
mechanisms, are necessary success factors.”
• Unfortunately governments often only partially devolve management rights
(i.e. power) to CFGs, with negative influences on their operations.
• The effect of government interference with land and tree tenure is
pernicious. For example, in the Philippines, the government’s willingness to
revoke community forestry agreements has seriously weakened CFGs.
• In Vietnam, Thanh and Sikor (2006), found that formal devolution of land
management from the state to CFGs sometimes did not translate to actual
rights, resulting in opportunistic overharvesting of residual native forest.
• Holland, et al, 2017 found that “forest-friendly” collective titles reduced
deforestation rates in Ecuador but use restrictions met with resistance by
local people.

19.
Forest rights reforms
in Mexico, Nepal and
Guatemala

20.
Mexico links forest rights with land rights
• Where forest rights are secured through land rights and agrarian reforms, they are
more likely to enjoy constitutional backing and are removed from the jurisdiction
of the forestry authorities
• 1986 forestry law transferred decision-making power over forests to ejidos on
condition that they meet SFM standards (e.g. based on management plan drafted
by forester.) Stumpage fees accrue entirely to ejidos. The role of the state reduced
essentially to supervision & support (Carter, 2005)
• Bray, et al, (2006) find that in Mexico, “agrarian reform laws have been more
crucial in [fostering] Community Forest Enterprises (CFEs) than specific forest
legislation.”
• “Agrarian reform distributed forest lands to communities and provided a template
for community governance that could later serve as an institutional platform for
the development of CFEs.” (CFEs emerging as social enterprises)

21.
Nepal grants forest management rights
to community user groups
• 1957: Forest Nationalization
(centralization) Act and consequent heavy
deforestations @1.7% (1978-94)
• 1970s: National initiative to decentralize
forest management to local bodies
• 1980s: Initiatives to transfer management
rights to Community Forest User Groups
(CFUGs), formalized in Forest Act of 1993
• Today: Over 40% of population involved
in Community Forestry (CF) program
through 20,000 CFUGs, managing almost
33% of Nepal’s forest area
• Forest cover increased by 13% between
1990 and 2014 (FRA, 2015)

22.
Nepal: Reform’s Effects on Forest Investment
• Most informants believe that the forest rights granted to communities
were a necessary pre-condition to the investments that have occurred.
• Generally good provision made to ensure that disadvantaged community
members benefit from investments and enterprises. (Emerging social
enterprise models.)
• Evidence that rights devolution has restored and deepened community
cohesion
• The regulatory burden is heavy, stymies investment, and regulations are
inconsistently applied, as a result:
▪ Informants’ perceptions of tenure security, while still higher than pre-reform, declined
significantly from highs immediately post-reform (Sharma et al, 2017).

23.
Guatemala’s experiment with Community Concessions
in the Mayan Biosphere Reserve
• Encompasses 2.1 million hectares of lowland tropical rainforest; Mayan forests of Mexico
and Guatemala make up the largest contiguous tropical forest north of the Amazon.
• Five objectives: conserve biodiversity; maintain the ecological equilibrium of the area;
conserve cultural heritage; provide development alternatives consistent with resource
conservation; promote active participation of society.
• 14 concessions granted in the MUZ since 1995 (12 community and 2 industrial
concessions); 25-year concession term. Harvesting based on FSC-approved management
plan.
• Annual deforestation rate 2001-2009 0.5% compared to pre-concession (1991) rate of
1.5%. (2.0% per year in Peten outside of concessions.)
• Most timber sales are generated by mahogany (75%) and cedar (10%-15%), which are
not in great supply, raising concerns about the economic sustainability of the
concessions. Difficult to commercialize non-traditional species (Reyes Rodas, 2014),

24.
A tentative model of the
investment effects of forest
rights devolution

25.
Rights can catalyze investment in community
forest enterprises
• Rights devolution “triggers” new kinds of action (social and
economic) at the local level and externally that lays foundations
for investment in new forms of CFEs.
• Two key points to keep in mind:
(1) We are adding a time dimension to understanding
“investment readiness” as a process of internal and
external social and economic development that unfolds
through stages, and
(2) We want to bring out aspects of the social character of
the process, determined by the social, collective
character of the resource rights.

26.
Stage 1: Inward investment and development of
representative institutions
At the community level
• New private investment in housing, education, health; funded by
local savings and remittance flows.
• New community-level organizations formed, catalyzed by rights and
the new space for decision-making about forest use made possible
by less regulation (Community User Groups)
External action(s)
• Formation of regional or national organizations/federations
representing interests of Community User Groups

27.
Stage 2: Community institutions gain confidence, local
leaders and entrepreneurs emerge
At the community level
• Further development of local social capital: NGO-supported small
business projects; improvement of forest conditions; CUGs gain
experience in sorting out local conflicts. (Emergence of effective
local leadership may prove essential to moving into successful
stage 2.)
• First Community Forestry Enterprises (CFEs) emerge.
External actions
• “Forest reform.” Tenure reform plus investment, in roads,
training, health, education, i.e. in public goods deemed important
to help ensure success alongside new rights (analogous to
“agrarian reform” programs of the 1960s, i.e. the “full package.”)

28.
Stage 3: Stronger local social capital attracts new
forms of “bridging capital”
At the community level
• Community User Groups license CFEs harvesting and processing goods for the
external market, with investment in capital equipment in the form of donor
grants and concessionary loans.
• CFEs have a “social character,” in that poor sections of the community may be
principal suppliers of NTFPs and labor (note that Nepal law requires that 30-35
percent of income be set aside for Dalits).
External actions
• Federations of forest user groups focus initially on ensuring efficient government
implementation of rights commitments, but may begin to give greater attention
promoting commercial investment, including by advocating for investment-
friendly regulations.
• Certified forest use and extraction plans meet investment conditions of ESG
investors (e.g., Guatemala community forest concessions FSC certified.)

29.
The Future of Community
Forestry

30.
• Powerful drivers of change in the forestry sector are here to stay:
▪ Communities, indigenous people and their partners challenging state
hegemony in forest governance.
▪ Women and previously voiceless challenging and disrupting how
forests are used and governed locally.
• Secure land rights can amplify benefits of forest rights reforms.
• States will retain an interest in forest outcomes. Advocates &
researchers can foster fresh thinking on appropriate state roles (that
reduce over-reach), donors can support reform of forest agencies.
• Because of social character of collective tenure, forest enterprises must
pursue commercial and social goals simultaneously.
• International agreements (FPIC, GCF, VGGT) and corporate sustainability
commitments keep pressure on for rights recognition.
The future of community forestry

31.
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Bray, D.B., Antinori, C., Torres-Rojo, J.M. 2006. The Mexican model of community forest management: The role of agrarian policy, forest policy and
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32.
cifor.org
blog.cifor.org
ForestsTreesAgroforestry.org
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