Social Capital and the Governance of Forest Resources

Abstract

"Given recent research linking forests and the global carbon budget, forest management has become a central political issue at the national and international levels. If forests are to play a central role in reducing the threat of global warming as well as other important environmental issues, government policy toward forest management becomes pivotal. To improve outcomes, contemporary forestry policies in developed and developing countries seek to shift some control over forest management to the community level. In a fundamental sense, such community level forestry policies seek to use the social capital of communities to help manage forests. But despite the centrality of social capital to community forestry plans, neither national governments nor international bodies have a very good understanding of the role played by social capital in forest management at the local level. Since communities through forest management could represent a solution to important environmental concerns, we argue that it is critical to understand the role played by social capital in the community-level management of forests. This paper seeks to evaluate the role of social capital in the local governance of forests. It does so by analyzing crossnational, panel data gathered at the community level in 47 forests representing 7 countries. We find that different measures of social capital have a measurable effects on the condition of forests. Taken together, there is evidence that social capital matters to forest conditions, regardless of national government policy."