Browsing by Author "Pulhin, Juan M."

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Co-management in Community Forestry: How the Partial Devolution of Management Rights Creates Challenges for Forest Communities
(2012) Cronkleton, Peter; Pulhin, Juan M.; Saigal, Sushil
"Forest tenure reform has opened economic and livelihood opportunities for community forestry management through the devolution of management rights under broader decentralisation reforms. However, the transfer of rights and associated power to forest communities is usually partial. The view of property as composed of 'bundles of rights' allows for the disaggregation of rights transferred from government to local people. In practice, it is common that rights held by natural resource stakeholders encompass only part of the rights bundle. This partial transfer of rights shapes community forestry institutions and the manner in which they function. When communities and state agencies share responsibilities and benefits of forest management, they collaborate within co-management systems. Co-management systems are attractive to governments because they open avenues for local participation in resource governance and more equitable benefit-sharing while maintaining some level of state control. However, co-management systems can place a greater burden on community level actors without providing the corresponding benefits. As a result, co-management can fail to meet expectations. In response, the promotion of community forestry may require greater emphasis on adjusting forest regulatory frameworks, institutions, and agencies, to allow more freedom by community-level actors in developing forest management systems."
Community Forestry in the Philippines: Paradoxes and Perspectives in Development Practice
(2000) Pulhin, Juan M.
"The last two decades witnessed the emergence of community forestry as a major government strategy to promote sustainable development in the Philippine uplands. At the central policy level, it has evolved to embody three core development objectives democratization of resources access, poverty alleviation, and the sustainability of the forest resources. These objectives closely parallel the political, economic and resource sustainability intentions inherent in the concept of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD). "At the project level, a variety of techniques and approaches are designed and employed by development institutions to realise the three core objectives. These include various types of resource access instruments, appraisal and participatory planning techniques, and the approach to incorporate social factors into the concept of sustained-yield management, to name a few. "Notwithstanding these developments, case studies of selected government-sponsored community forestry projects indicate that the three core objectives are far from being realized. The attempt to democratise forest resource access through the use of access instruments has benefited the local elite and reinforced the government's jurisdiction over these resources. Similarly, the use of appraisal and 'participatory' planning techniques has homogenised views of the local community and advanced a centrally determined agenda in forest management that has worked against the alleviation of poverty. Moreover, forest degradation has continued, despite the emphasis of community forestry on sustaining forest resources. "Three perspectives are offered to help explain the above paradoxes: (1) the unfavorable socio-political contexts by which the different techniques and approaches are being employed; (2) poor application of these techniques; and (3) the instrumentalist nature associated with their use that reinforces the characteristics of homogeneity, technocracy, and centralism which are inclined to produced paradoxical outcomes. "Considering the dual problems on poverty and environmental degradation in the Philippine uplands, however, the gloomy prognosis for community forestry does not suggests that it should be abandoned. Through a responsive mode of practice, there is room to move to improve the outcomes of the three central objectives."
Community-Based Forest Management in the Philippines: A Preliminary Assessment
(2001) Guiang, Ernesto S.; Borlagdan, Salve B.; Pulhin, Juan M.
"The present report is an initial attempt to look into the phenomenon of community participation in forest management and governance in the country, both within and outside the context of the government’s CBFM program. It is the result of several months of literature review and limited site validation of documented and undocumented CBFM experiences. It seeks to characterize the various CBFM models that exist, identify their strengths and weaknesses, and articulate underlying issues that enhance or constrain community participation. In so doing, it hopes to serve as a building block for further research and, hopefully, future positive action that will secure the communities’ access to their natural resource base, ensure the sustainability of their livelihood, and contribute to the increase in number of empowered individuals whose community organizations and institutions reinforce the sustainable use of their resources."
Enhancing Forest Tenure Reforms through More Responsive Regulations
(2012) Larson, Anne; Pulhin, Juan M.
"Forest tenure reforms have offered new opportunities for communities to obtain formal rights to forests and forest benefits, but at the same time a variety of limitations are placed on livelihood options. This article draws on several case studies of reforms in Africa, Asia and Latin America to analyse the regulations accompanying reforms. It identifies three types of regulations, namely rules that limit areas available to local communities; rules that delineate conservation areas and impose related limits on use; and bureaucratic requirements for permits and management plans, which restrict the commercial use and marketing of valuable forest products. It discusses problems with these regulations, and proposes a simple framework for identifying ways to promote regulations that work for forest conservation but are more responsive to the needs of communities and forests."
Forest Policies and Governance on an Uneven Playing Field: Barriers for a Sucessful CBFM in the Philippines
(2013) Pulhin, Juan M.; Peras, Rose Jane J.; Tapia, Maricel A.
"Forest policies and the institutions that implement them have historically been biased against rural communities. Even with the recent forest policy reforms that devolve 'bundles of rights' to local communities through the various government-initiated community-forestry arrangements in many tropical countries including Asia, the rural poor remains marginalized in the implementation process. Moreover, they struggle to compete with the other more powerful stakeholders on an uneven playing field of ethnic and other social-economic inequities and institutional hurdles. Scholarship on common pool resources led by the Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom provides a formula in terms of the 'key design principles' (see for instance Ostrom 1990 and 1998) that offer solution to the problems and challenges associated with the governance of common pool resources such as community-managed forest areas. Building on these design principles, Inoue (2011) proposed a 'prototype design guidelines' for collaborative governance of forests to include 'graduated membership', 'commitment principle' and 'fair benefit distribution'. This paper examines how the Philippines? forest policies and its multi-tiered governance system employed on an uneven playing field continue to frustrate efforts to promote social justice and sustainable forest management despite recent tenure reform initiatives through the government's adoption of community-based forest management (CBFM) as the national strategy for forest management. Using two CBFM sites as case studies, the paper argues that certain institutional and socio-political barriers operate at various forest governance levels that are likely to impede the successful employment of Inoue's 'prototype design guidelines' at the local level. Radical institutional and structural reforms are therefore required at the different forest governance levels as a vital strategy to level the playing field and provide an enabling environment and hence increase the chance for a more successful employment of the design guidelines on the ground."
People, Power and Timber: Politics of Resource use in Community-Based Forest Management
(2008) Pulhin, Juan M.; Dressler, Wolfram H.
"Political powers emanating from the state continue to drive the management of forest stands in the Philippines. This paper examines how centralized state political power is exercised through devolved or 'centered' powers at the policy, program and project level in forest management in the southern Philippines. We investigate how centralized political power emanates through networks to affect the success of local timber utilization through community-based forest management (CBFM) in Mindanao Island. By examining the shift from centralized to devolved forest management, results suggest that centralized power continues to be exercised as a form of local control through CBFM. The conclusion asserts that, in certain conditions, local communities can use their political capacities to effectively negotiate, or even resist centralized state control over 'their own' timber resources."
Politics of Tenure Reform in the Philippine Forest Land
(2003) Pulhin, Juan M.; Dizon, Josefina T.
"From the colonial period until the early 1980s, the Philippine forest policies had promoted a highly regulatory, centrally controlled and industry-biased approach to forest management. Such policies placed the access and control of the country's forest resources into the hands of the elite who have the resources and political connections to commercially exploit theses resources for their own personal gains. Consequently, the uneducated and the less privileged majority particularly most of the upland communities have been barred from enjoying the benefits of the utilization of the nations patrimony. Furthermore, ruthless commercial forest exploitation had totally disregarded the principles of sustainable management that had contributed to one of the greatest forest plunder in the tropical world. "To address the twin problems of inequitable access to forest resources and massive forest depletion, major policy and forest management reforms were undertaken, particularly after the end of Marcos dictatorial rule in 1986. At the core of these reforms was the democratization of access to forest land and resources through the Community-Based Forest Management program or CBFM. Through the issuance of Community-Based Forest Management Agreement (CBFMA), the CBFM program provides land tenure to organized upland groups (Peoples Organization) that entitles them to benefit from a given forest land for a period of 25 years renewable for another 25 years subject to certain conditions. "At the central policy level, the reform towards democratization of forest resources through the issuance of CBFMA is considered by some as both radical and progressive. Under the government Strategic Plan for CBFM, 9 million hectares of the country's classified forest lands totaling to 15.8 million hectares have been earmarked for community management by the year 2008. This totally departs from the traditional forest management approach which had placed 8-10 million hectares of forest lands around one-third of the country's total land area of 30 million hectares under the control of the elite sector particularly the few timber license operators. To date, a total of around 5.7 million hectares have been awarded to thousands of POs nationwide through the issuance of CBFMAs. "This paper traces the evolution of forest policies in the Philippines from the colonial period to the present. The analysis focuses on the tenure reform in the forest land over the last two decades or so and its initial impacts in addressing the problems of social inequity and forest depletion. The paper argues that despite the seemingly progressive policies and recent government accomplishments in terms of the number of tenure instruments awarded to local communities, the anticipated positive impacts of the tenure reform are yet to be seen on the ground. The combined effects of politics at the national and local levels, declining quality of the forests, and the instrumentalist nature of the tenure instrument prohibit genuine tenure reform to take place. This in turn thwarts the accruing of benefits to the upland poor and impedes the promotion of sustainable forest management in CBFMA areas."
Tenure Reform and Its Impacts in the Philippine Forest Lands
(2008) Pulhin, Juan M.; Dizon, Josefina T.; Cruz, Rex Victor O.
"This paper examines the tenure reform in the Philippine forestlands through a historical analysis of forest policy development from the colonial period to the present with emphasis over the last three decades. It also analyzes the impacts of tenure reform and the associated policy and related changes in terms of the LIFE indicator (livelihood, income, forest condition and equity) based on review of published and grey literature, results from case studies, and the outputs of multi-sectoral assessments on CBFM. "Despite seemingly radical efforts to restructure forest management, our initial analysis of the impacts of tenure reform in forest lands in terms of the LIFE indicator shows that the anticipated positive impacts are yet to be fully realized on the ground. The issuance of the different tenure instruments have benefitted the government more by effectively recruiting local communities to take on forest management and protection responsibilities - tasks which the government were expected to perform before the tenure reform took place. However, livelihood and income of forest communities have not significantly improved in most cases. The combined effects of unstable policies and overly bureaucratic procedures and requirements, none recognition of communities' use rights over forest resources, and inadequate government assistance prohibit genuine tenure reform from taking root. These factors thwart the accrual of benefits to the upland poor and may impede the promotion of sustainable forest management in CBFMA areas."
When is Decentralization in Forest Management a Success and when is it a Failure? Case Studies from the Philippines
(2008) Balooni, Kulbhushan; Pulhin, Juan M.; Inoue, Makoto
"The decentralization reforms and political conditions in the Philippines present an ideal environment for forest management by recognizing the land entitlements of upland and indigenous communities and promoting the involvement of local government units. To grasp the present state of decentralization in the forestry sector in the Philippines, this study draws on case studies conducted in Nueva Vizcaya Province in assessing whether current conditions policies, institutions, and programs are conducive to effective decentralization. It attempts to answer a broader question: when is decentralization a success and when is it a failure? These case studies represent a mix of successes and failures that are of interest from a policy viewpoint. The study reveals that there are grass roots realities that slow or cause the failure of decentralization initiatives. The high number of actors and stakeholders affect the pace of decentralization reforms and make it difficult to assign or identify accountability. Some of the reasons for the failure were conflicting positions of institutions during the project planning, peoples organizations being scattered over a large area, ineffective coordination of peoples organizations, overlapping administration and forest management boundaries, and the politicization of local institutions. The study shows that decentralization reforms require highly capable community organizations and self-management capacity. It was found that a mix of site-specific interventions and community endeavors that focus on securing local livelihoods has led to some success. This is a strategy that helps decentralization reforms."