Tenure and forest management

in India how should we assess

the JFM reform?
Gunnar Khlin and colleagues
Book workshop Lake View Hotel
Land Reforms in Asia and Africa:
Impacts on Poverty and Natural
Resource Management
Papers drawn upon
Woodfuels, Livelihoods, and Policy Interventions:
Changing Perspectives, Arnold, M., G. Khlin and R. Persson
(2006), World Development, Vol. 34/3 pp 596-611.
Welfare Implications of Community Forestry Plantations
in Developing Countries: The Orissa Social Forestry
Project, Khlin, G. and G.S. Amacher (2005), American Journal of
Agricultural Economics, Vol. 87/4, pp 855-869.
Fuelwood, forests and community management
evidence from household studies, Cooke, P., G. Khlin, and
W.F. Hyde (2008), Environment and Development Economics.
Spatial Variability and Disincentives to Harvest:
Deforestation and Fuelwood Collection in South Asia,
Khlin, G. and P. J. Parks (2001), Land Economics, 77 (2): 206-218.
'The Other Energy Crisis: Fuelwood'
Eckholm (1975):
"for more than a third of the world's people, the
real energy crisis is a daily scramble to find the
wood they need to cook dinner".
Application of gap models
(forest growth-consumption=deforestation)
Fuelwood collection => deforestation
Predictions/expectations
Massive deforestation
Scarcity of energy
Increased time collecting
Reduced production/leisure
Inferior fuels
Reduced nutrition and health
Increasing part of household budget to fuel
Implications
Large scale investments in community
plantations (e.g. village woodlots)
Dissemination of seedlings to private
households farm forestry.
Rehabilitation of government forests.
Dissemination of improved stoves, biogas etc.
Division of the country between donors (Sida,
ODA, ADB etc) Sida took Tamil Nadu, Orissa
and Bihar1 billion SEK over 10 years

The emergence of JFM in Orissa
Forest Department, parastatal/paramilitary/
corrupt/inefficient in managing forests.
Donor supported Social Forestry Wing
100 000 ha of community plantations
(reduced tension against informal protection?)
Informal protection committees established
JFM established in West Bengal
Great majority positive to JFM in Orissa sample
Widespread adoption
JFM
Early experiences from West Bengal in the
1970s
Supportive legislation in 1988 and 1990.
Wide coverage in 1990s
In 2003: 17 Mha, managed by 85 000 forest
protection committees covering 170 000
villages in 27 states.
Important tool to reach long-term forest cover
objectives.

Institutional issues
Shift from social forestry to local management
of natural forests.
More conservation than basic needs.
Constrained fuelwood collection.
Efficiency vs equity.
Women and landless negatively affected
Does devolution of power really mean less
government control?
Concerns of constrained collection
Displacement effect?
Collection in neighboring areas
Replacement effect?
Own plantation of fuelwood trees
Market purchase
Fuel switching
Reduced consumption?
Increased time allocation?
Review: impact on forests
Ostwald et al. 2000. Indicating local protection efforts
in forest vegetation change in Orissa, India using NOAA
AVHRR data. Journal of Tropical Forest Science 12:778-
793
Somanathan et al. 2009. Decentralization for cost-
effective conservation. PNAS 106(11).
Baland et al. 2008. Forests to the People:
Decentralization and Forest Degradation in the Indian
Himalayas, draft.
Ravindranath and Sudha. 2004. Joint Forest
Management in India: Spread, Performance and Impact
Review: impact on collection
- Agarwal, B. (2001), Participatory exclusion,
community forestry, and gender: an analysis for
South Asia and a conceptual framework, World
Development 29: 16231648.
+ Bandyopadhyay and Shyamsundar, Fuelwood
consumption and participation in community
forestry in India, WBPRWP, 2004.
+ Ravindranath and Sudha. 2004. Joint Forest
Management in India: Spread, Performance and
Impact

Review: impact on equity
Agarwal, B. (2001), Participatory exclusion, community
forestry, and gender: an analysis for South Asia and a
conceptual framework, World Development 29: 1623
1648.
Adhikari, B. (2003), Property rights and natural resources:
socio-economic heterogeneity and distributional
implications of common property resource management,
Working Paper 1-03, South Asian Network for Development
and Environmental Economics, Kathmandu, Nepal.
Kumar, S. (2002), Does participation in common pool
resource management help the poor? A social costbenefit
analysis of Joint Forest Management in Jharkhand, India,
World Development 30: 763782.
Ravindranath and Sudha. 2004. Joint Forest Management in
India: Spread, Performance and Impact
Potential welfare impacts of SF
Aggregate individual WTP (CVM on additional
community plantation in Environment and
Devt Economics)
Impact on deforestation (Khlin and Parks in
Land Economics)
Impact on fuel consumption (thesis)
Impact on collection time (Khlin and
Amacher in American Journal of Agricultural
Economics)
And colleagues?
Somanathan, Indian Statistical Institute, New
Delhi
Ashokankur Datta
Ravindranath, Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore
Indu K Murthy
Madelene Ostwald, Gothenburg
Gundimeda, IIT Bombay
Potential data
NSSO, 54th round, 1998, special section on
commons;
Standard NSSO rounds
EERN data from six states during 2001-2002
(1421 JFMC)
Forest Department records
Remote sensing
Potential research issues
Environment: The impact on forest quality
and effectiveness in arresting forest
degradation (incl. spillover effects).
Equity: The distribution of cost and benefits of
the program on different segments of village
population. (over time?) Links to participation
in FUGs.
Efficiency: the returns from alternative forest
management


Potential strategy I
Identify villages in NSSO special round
Combine with general village level data
Combine with Forest Department data on year
of JFM establishment, land use etc etc.
Combine with remote sensing data on
vegetation
Potential strategy II
Start with EERN data;
Combine with general village level data
Combine with Forest Department data on year
of JFM establishment, land use etc etc.
Combine with remote sensing data on
vegetation

Other alternatives
Review existing literature on devolution of
forest management in India;
Do original data collection, eg follow-up
surveys based on EERN or Orissa data
Tree planting on private lands (farm forestry)
Social forestry (community plantations)