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Participation and Decentralized Forest Management: Social Effects of Local Government Initiatives

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dc.contributor.author Larson, Anne en_US
dc.contributor.author Zeledon, Virginia en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2009-07-31T14:33:54Z
dc.date.available 2009-07-31T14:33:54Z
dc.date.issued 2004 en_US
dc.date.submitted 2007-07-01 en_US
dc.date.submitted 2007-07-01 en_US
dc.identifier.uri https://hdl.handle.net/10535/1038
dc.description.abstract "This article is based on research undertaken in eight Nicaraguan municipalities (Bonanza, Chichigalpa, Dipilto, El Castillo, Estela�­, Mozonte, Siuna and Tola), as well as an analysis of several laws and institutions at the national level. The case studies involved in-depth interviews with local and central government officials, local resource users and NGO and project officials. The municipalities were chosen to include those representing the three most important forestry contexts in the country: deforested areas (3), pine forests (2) and broad-leaf forests (3), as well as municipalities both with and without protected areas. In particular we selected municipalities that had clearly taken some kind of initiatives in the forestry sector, whether these were beneficial or not for forests or local people. Based on these case studies, this article examines the types of local forestry initiatives being promoted, the effects on resource users and the role of local participation in municipal government decisions. Though the research is preliminary, the results suggest a clear correlation between effective participation and the absence of corruption or elite capture by logging companies, but participation alone does not guarantee positive results for resource users. One of the most important factors found to adversely affect these local actors is a dominant ideology of conservation that sees resource users as the problem in deforestation. The research suggests that the main initiatives providing direct, positive benefits for local resource managers were those that took the resource users themselves as their starting point for intervention. The next section of this paper discusses the theoretical benefits of decentralization and some of the problems found with its implementation in practice. The ensuing section briefly presents the legal and institutional framework of forestry in Nicaragua. The following section presents the findings from the case studies. This is followed by the conclusions." en_US
dc.subject IASC en_US
dc.subject forest management--case studies en_US
dc.subject deforestation en_US
dc.subject decentralization en_US
dc.subject state and local governance en_US
dc.subject participatory management en_US
dc.subject forest law en_US
dc.subject conservation en_US
dc.subject forest policy en_US
dc.title Participation and Decentralized Forest Management: Social Effects of Local Government Initiatives en_US
dc.type Conference Paper en_US
dc.coverage.region Central America & Caribbean en_US
dc.coverage.country Nicaragua en_US
dc.subject.sector Forestry en_US
dc.identifier.citationconference The Commons in an Age of Global Transition: Challenges, Risks and Opportunities, the Tenth Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property en_US
dc.identifier.citationconfdates August 9-13 en_US
dc.identifier.citationconfloc Oaxaca, Mexico en_US
dc.submitter.email yinjin@indiana.edu en_US


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