This document summarizes research from the Poverty and Environment Network (PEN) on the contribution of environmental incomes and forests to rural livelihoods. PEN conducted over 8,000 household surveys across 25 countries. On average, forests provided 12.5% of household income. Forest reliance was highest for the poorest households and in Africa. The research also found that claims about gender roles in forest product collection varied significantly by region. Forest tenure systems influenced use, with open access forests used most intensely. Land-rich and male-headed households cleared more forest land. The research suggests forests play a vital role in rural incomes and livelihoods.

1. Environmental incomes
and rural livelihoods:
a global comparative analysis
The PEN Team
Side event: Linking conservation and poverty, landscapes and
livelihoods: what have we learnt so far?
WCC Jeju
10th September 2012
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2. Outline
 Introduction to the
Poverty and Environment
Network (PEN)
 Research findings:
• Forest/environmental
income &
livelihoods/poverty
• Gender
• Tenure
• Deforestation
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3. PEN is…
Large, tropics-wide collection of detailed & high-quality &
comparable data by PhD students on the poverty-forest
(environment) nexus, coordinated by CIFOR.
It is the most comprehensive analysis of poverty-forest
linkages undertaken to date.
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4. Features of PEN
 Approach: a network
• PhD students: Long fieldwork &
student enthusiasm
• Supported by senior resource
persons
• Mutual benefits
 Capacity building
• Majority of partners from
developing countries
 State-of-the-art methods
• Quality data – short recall
• Comparable methods
• Methods summarised in a 2011
book
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5. PEN: the numbers..
 25 countries
 40+ PEN studies
 239 households in the average study
 364 villages or communities surveyed
 >8,000 households surveyed
 40,950 household visits by PEN enumerators
 2,313 data fields (variables) in the average study
 294,150 questionnaire pages filled out and entered
 456,546 data cells (numbers) in the average study
 17,348,734 data cells in the PEN global data base!
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6. The PEN data set
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7. What is the contribution of forests
and other environmental resources
to rural livelihoods?
Two common hypotheses
from the literature:
1. Forest/environmental income
is significant in rural livelihoods
(and considerably undervalued)
2. The poor rely more on forests:
• Open/easy access
• Lack of other opportunities
(low opp. cost of labour)
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8. Income shares by source, global
Cropping 17.6 12.0
Forest 12.5 9.6
Wage 15.2
Livestock 5.1 7.0
Other 7.7
Business 7.3
Other env. 4.6 1.6
0 10 20 30
Share (%)
Subsistence Cash
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9. Forest reliance by income quintile, global
Top 20% 9.1 9.9
60-80% 10.0 9.5
40-60% 11.5 8.9
20-40% 13.0 8.3
Bottom 20% 15.3 7.5
0 5 10 15 20 25
Forest income share (%)
Subsistence Cash
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10. Inter-site variation
.6 Forest reliance and income at site level
Forest income share
.2 0 .4
5 6 7 8 9
Total income (log, USD PPP)
Fitted line Latin America Asia Africa
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11. Gender
 Many of the claims often
made in the literature on
gender and forest products
are based on case studies
• It is unclear how
generalizable they actually
are
 We investigated whether
several commonly held views
on gender and forest use are
supported by the global PEN
data using descriptive and
regression analysis
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12. Who collects forest products?
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13. Summary of gender findings
 There is large regional variation in both the shares of
forest products collected by women
 Even after controlling for most of the factors discussed in
the literature as well as differences in level of market
integration, women in Africa collect a much larger share
of forest products than women in Asia and Latin America
 Many of the claims that come out of the gender and
forest literature do not hold using the PEN global data
sample
 Men play a much more important and diverse role in the
contribution of forest products to rural livelihoods than is
often reported
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14. Tenure: what questions?
Who are the formal owners
of forests? (State; Community;
Private)
Who are the actual or de
facto users of the forest?
(State; Community; Private;
and all permutations)
If rules are enforced, how
strongly are then enforced?
(High; Moderate; None)
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15. Regional forest tenure distributions by formal owner
Asia Latin America Africa
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16. Summary of tenure findings
 Formal ownership category
influences the intensity of use
of forests (esp. open access)
 Moderate enforcement has a
greater effect than high
enforcement for state
(negative) and private
(positive) forests
 Full congruence between
owners and users can have
negative effect on forest
income due to enforcement
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17. Patterns of rural deforestation
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18. Incidence of land clearing
 Incidence: 27% of HH’s, but highly
variable across sites. Mean area
cleared = 1.3ha
 Greater incidence of land
clearance among:
• Land rich HH’s (clear 55% more
land than landless poor)
• Male-headed HH’s (gender may
be a mediating factor)
• Younger HH’s
• HH’s close to forest
• HH’s that have suffered
“shocks”
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19. Conclusions
 Forest/env. income play a vital role in rural livelihoods
• 1/5 of the household income from forests in our sample
• Poor are more reliant
 Failing to account for this contribution:
• Gives a misleading picture of rural livelihoods
• Overestimates poverty
• Gender findings question perceived wisdom
• Biases perspectives on pathways in and out of poverty:
 Benefits of converting forest to cropland overestimated
 Tenure and property rights are crucial
 Prohibiting access to wild product source extraction/
marketing may have significant rural welfare costs
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20. Look out for…
 Special Issue of World
Development including all of the
PEN-related research findings
 PEN
website:http://www.cifor.org/pen/
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21. www.cifor.org
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