Managing forests as common property

This comprehensive study brings together available information about the role of common property as a system of governance and its current relevance to forest management and use.

A review of indigenous common property systems that have disappeared or survived, together with an examination of the experiences of selected contemporary collective management programmes in different countries, reveals the main factors that appear to determine success or failure.

Case studies include

• South and South East Asia
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• South America
• Mexico
• Zimbabwe (CAMPFIRE)
• Nepal
• India
• Thailand
• The Philippines
• Republic of Korea

The study explores broad factors such as policies, population pressures and suitable economic environments, local organizational factors and motivation to manage in relation to the available resource, and institutional factors at the government and donor level. The final chapter of the study summarizes implications for policy, research and practice which include:

Broader factors affecting choice of forest management regimes

• the government's willingness and ability to provide an adequate legal basis for common property management
• recognizing the limits to how much change can be achieved within the framework of forest-oriented programmes and distinguishing between those policy changes that can be effected within the forest sector and those that depend on broader policy
• the impact of market forces is central to many of the issues that arise, and further research centred on this topic is required.

Supporting local collective management of forests

• Strong promotion of communal management, often at the urging of donors, has frequently imposed pressures on forestry bureaucracies that they have often found difficult to absorb
• It is important to ensure that the institutional underpinnings of change are in place before initiating interventions<<LI>It is important to achieve rapid progress in providing support and regulatory services over large areas without becoming centralized and dependent on standard approaches that are inflexible.
• It may be necessary to examine which state institutions are most likely to be effective in providing support to local collective management of forests
• the impacts of shared and collective forest management initiatives should be critically to determine their impacts on villagers lives as well as in terms of effective protection or institutional change.

Local factors affecting capacity to organize and manage
Key factors include clear group membership criteria; the right to organize; the existence of a resource with definable boundaries; dependence on internal rather than external institutions; realistic internally set and monitored rules; and low-cost conflict resolution mechanisms

Issues that should benefit from further investigation include the following:

• Characteristics of the resource or output that facilitate collective control
• Measures to enable collective management regimes to deal with growing commercial demands
• The impact of size and composition of user groups on their durability and effectiveness

[adapted from author and FAO abstract]