State-Community Cooperation in the Commons and its Contribution to Environmental Outcomes: Evidence from Thailand's Community Forest

Abstract

"The paper contributes to a much discussed research question that whether and when it improves matters, in this case, environmental outcomes, to vest ownership in public entity or collectivities. It, both theoretically and empirically, offers a new solution that ownership can be shared, as forests cover a wide range of resources. Some resources can be vested under public ownership and some can be vested under the local community. With cooperation, this can solve hold-up problems and create an incentive for human capital sharing that ultimately leads to optimal human capital investments and hence better environmental outcomes. Empirically, the paper takes Thailand's 'forest community registration' programme as a measure for such cooperation. Although the registration does not give de jure common property rights to the communities, it marks the cooperation and the sharing of knowledge and human capital between the state and communities in protecting the forests. Based on both baseline fixed effect and instrumental variable strategy estimations, it is found that at the province level, an increase in the degree of cooperation is associated with (i) a reduction in the occurrence of forest fires, (ii) a decrease in air pollution, and (iii) lower level of forest deterioration and an improvement in forest regeneration."