|
Abstract:
|
"In the past decade or so, international attention has focused on the plight of forests, resource degradation, declining biodiversity and the impact of decreasing forest resources on the lives of many people (FAO 2001; FAO 2005). Although this problem is global in nature, it is more serious in the world's tropical forests. More forests were lost between 1981 and 1990 than is known to have been lost in any other decade in human history (FAO 1993). During this period, tropical forests alone were lost at a rate of 0.8 per cent (15.4 million ha) per year (World Resources Institute (WRI) 1994). One effort to address the deforestation problem has been the promotion of institutional changes within the forestry bureaucracies in order to make them more responsive to the needs of the local people and to the demands resulting from such phenomena as globalization and climate change (Larson 2002; World Bank 2000).
"Traditionally, the major strategy adopted by the third world countries was to withdraw these forests from the public domain into what were expected to be protective hands of the state and managed as government-owned forest reserves. As population pressure, the need for land and demand for wood and charcoal have increased in the last quarter century, this strategy has been tested and found wanting (Wily 1995). A recent approach has been the decentralization of forest management control to the local level through a variety of institutional arrangements. While these institutional changes have in some cases resulted in sustainable social ecological systems, in other cases where they have resulted in their collapse (Gunderson and Holling 2002).
"Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the ways in which these newly established systems actually function at the local level. It is also not clear what the effects of these changes are, not only on the livelihood of the local people but also on the natural resources. Are these institutions always appropriate? Do decentralized policies meet the expectation of sustainable management of forest resources in developing countries? How do they affect the local people as far as access to these resources is concerned? Do they improve the lives of the rural poor? If not, what coping mechanisms do the local people use in such circumstances? These questions are important for policy makers and analysts alike because without an understanding of the effects of current and past institutional changes, they will be unable to adjust current policies in a way that improves future outcomes.
"The purpose of this paper is to examine how decentralization affected local forest resource users, who previous to the reform had very limited formal access rights to forests. Furthermore, it assesses how local forest users are coping in the face of recent policy reforms. An analysis of coping mechanisms that the local people employ after institutional changes is important because it enables us to understand the various coping strategies that people adopt in situations of such changes and the implications of the different coping strategies on natural resource use."
|