A Review of the Impact of Participatory Forest Management on Poverty Kate Schreckenberg, Cecila Luttrell, Catherine Moss, Liz Thassim Overseas Development Institute, London Prepared for the inception workshop of the project: Action Research on Assessing and Enhancing the Impact of Participatory Forest Management on the livelihoods of the Rural Poor 2-6 May, 2005, Kentmere Club, Nairobi
Aim of the presentation • To present some background to the research project • To inform the development of the research programme in each case study country, and the comparison between countries, by presenting the results of an international literature review on the impacts of participatory forest management (PFM) on poverty • To discuss key terms and concepts
Presentation outline • Why the interest in PFM and poverty? • Project history and key research questions • Methods of the literature review • Key concepts: Poverty, equity, vulnerability • Typology of PFM • Framework for assessing the impacts of PFM – Different types of stakeholders – Different types of impact • Effect of type of PFM on impacts • Conclusion (and competition)
Why the interest in PFM and poverty? History of interest in PFM: – Fuelwood ‘crisis’ of the 1970s – woodlots – ‘Social forestry’ in India – Reforestation of degraded forest in Nepal – JFM in India – Conservation of tropical forest by indigenous people (reducing the cost to the state) – Decentralisation, people’s participation in their own affairs – Forests as a source of improved rural livelihoods – Current focus on poverty reduction (going beyond subsistence and increasing incomes)
Genesis of this project • ODI: long history of work on people and forestry, including ‘Rural Development Forestry Network’ – Review of researchable constraints in PFM • No clear definition of PFM • No clear evidence of impacts of PFM either on the resource or on people’s livelihoods • CARE: – Tanzania proposal on role of forestry in rural livelihoods – led to interest to do similar work in other countries, incl. with CARE Nepal (2 nd generation issues such as elite capture) – Kenya work as part of a new EC-funded project supporting PFM networking in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda • Humboldt University/Vietnam: building on previous work in Dak Lak province to assess impact of different forms of forest land allocation
Project outline • Two year project • 4 countries: Kenya, Tanzania, Nepal and Vietnam • Overarching component by ODI (Kate and Cecilia), and Humboldt (Thomas) for Vietnam • Outputs at country and international level • Funding for overarching component from Ford Foundation, one of several donors concerned about the poverty impact of the funds they have invested in community forestry over the years
Key research questions • Can PFM contribute to poverty reduction by providing rural people with a sustainable stream of net benefits greater than those obtained under a non-PFM situation? • If yes, how significant are the benefits (in relation to other income- generating activities)? If no, what are the key negative impacts of PFM and are there ways of minimising or reversing these? • How do the impacts (both +ve and –ve) on poverty of different forms of PFM compare? What changes in policy, institutions and legal frameworks have the potential to enhance the contributions of PFM to poverty alleviation? • Are the costs and benefits of PFM distributed in an equitable manner both between communities and between households within communities? If not, are there means of ensuring a more equitable outcome?
Methods of the literature review • Literature (English) sourced from: – Websites – Journals – Personal contacts • Over 100 papers read (published and citable ‘grey’ lit): – Discourse: general discussion of PFM – Meta studies: reviews of several cases of PFM – Methodological studies (both within forestry and other sectors) – 16 Case studies: reports of one or more specific cases of PFM (as defined by authors) • Case studies analysed in two ways: – The type of PFM they represented – Costs and benefits of the PFM to different stakeholders
Key concepts: Poverty 1 • Literature on PFM (and forestry in general) uses many terms that are not defined: – Poverty reduction, poverty alleviation – ‘The poor’ – Equity – Vulnerability – Safety-nets, poverty traps, stepping-stones – Pro-poor activities • We need a more differentiated understanding of these terms if we want to ‘unpack’ the impacts of PFM on poverty • Our definitions will determine the methods we choose for our analysis
Key concepts: Poverty 2 Absolute poverty: – subsistence below minimal living conditions – WB uses $1 per day per capita (MDGs aim to halve the number of people in absolute poverty by 2015) – National governments have own poverty level based on nutritional needs or basket of goods Relative poverty: – Compares lowest segment of population with highest – Defined with reference to a general standard of living or average wage Degrees of poverty (Chronic Poverty Research Centre) – The chronically poor • ‘Always poor’, consistently below poverty line • ‘Usually poor’, are not poor in every period – The transitory poor • ‘Fluctuating poor’, are poor in some periods • ‘Occasionally poor’, usually above the poverty line but have at least one period in poverty – The non-poor: always above the poverty line • These categories describe poverty in a dynamic way: households moving up a category can be seen as ‘escaping poverty’ • The distinction between categories is critical for designing appropriate interventions, e.g. the chronic poor may be less able to take advantage of market opportunities
Key concepts: Poverty 3 World Bank suggests that addressing poverty has 3 components: – Empowerment - strengthening rights, capabilities and governance – Security - reducing vulnerability to shock, and ability to cope with shock – Opportunity - ability to capture emerging [income generating] opportunities • This makes clear that the task can encompass both securing households against things getting worse, and enabling them to take advantage of opportunities for improvement • Poverty reduction – reduces number of people in poverty • Poverty alleviation – makes poverty easier to bear
Key concepts: Measuring poverty • Objective approach : assumes there is a normative judgement on what constitutes poverty • Subjective approach : emphasises people’s preferences and how much they value goods and services • Income-based measures : often quantitative, good for understanding cash-dependent livelihoods • Basic needs measures : mostly quantitative, can include private incomes, social welfare payments, access to social networks, etc • Human capability approach : measures poverty in terms of outcomes such as life expectancy, literacy, malnutrition • Means indicators : measure the inputs required to achieve an end result, e.g. the cost of a minimum food basket • Ends indicators : measure the ultimate outcomes, e.g. nutritional status. More commonly used as easier to measure.
Key concepts: equity, vulnerability, pro-poor • Equity or equality: Equality treats everybody (regardless of need) equally, or in the same way. Equity is concerned with an equitable distribution of costs and benefits. • Vulnerability is the degree of exposure of individuals/hhds to shocks and stresses and their ability to prevent, mitigate or cope with the event. Poor hhds may be vulnerable but vulnerable hhds are not always poor. • Different types of activity in relation to poverty – Stepping stone activities: help people move out of poverty – Safety-nets: activities people fall back on in times of need (not regular gap-filling activities) – Poverty-traps: low productivity activities serving limited markets, with little development potential • What are pro-poor activities? – Some combination of the above? – Activities targeted at the very poorest?
PFM typology 1: why do we need one? • What’s in a name? – Community forestry – Adaptive co-management (ACM) – Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) – Community involvement in forest management (CIFM) – Participatory Forest Management (PFM) • “Participatory forestry refers to processes and mechanisms that enable those people who have a direct stake in forest resources to be part of decision-making in some or all aspects of forest management, from managing resources to formulating and implementing institutional frameworks” [adapted from FAO] • Why do we need to categorise the type of PFM? – In order to see whether different types of PFM have different types of impacts • In some countries, the same model of PFM is applied across the whole country or parts of the country, in others it is much more case- specific
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