Local Government and the International Biodiversity Regime: Collective Bargaining Over State Forests in Madagascar

Abstract

"Decentralized governance of biological resources has become a widely accepted standard of multilateral and bilateral aid programmes. Recent environmental and forestry legislations in many of the developing countries hosting significant biodiversity provide for the establishment of community forests. Participatory institutional arrangements at the local level are expected to be more efficient than centralized management regimes in dealing with environmental externalities. Following a reversal of forest policy in 1997, the management of State owned forests in Madagascar can now be delegated by contract to village communities. The policy aims at negotiating on a case by case basis a new legal status of forests. Negotiations are being conducted through a specific procedure of environmental mediation. But there is a lack of institutional demand to deal with environmental externalities. Due to legal pluralism, peasants are generally not in conflict with administrative agents. In many cases, potential contracting parties of management transfer already cooperate through parallel networks which result in unsustainable management. Because they are disempowered to challenge the working rules of these networks, forest users refuse official environmental mediation. Collective bargaining thus needs to be construed to render rules negotiable which have so far remained un-challenged. Unsustainable management cannot be transformed on the basis of local level negotiations alone. If negotiations are to be effective at the village level, collective bargaining hase to create incentives at the national and international levels of governance. Negotiations would have to externalise the latent or hidden dimensions of conflict by re-defining framework conditions under which local level negotiations are conducted."