Community forestry in Nepal: a policy innovation for local livelihoods

millions fed, food security, Community forestry, Civil society, CFUG,

National socioeconomic surveys in forestry : Guidance and survey modules for measuring the multiple roles of forests in household welfare and livelihoods

Adequate information on the socioeconomic contributions of forests to household welfare, livelihoods and poverty reduction is key to national sustainable development in the post-2015 agenda. While awareness is growing regarding the multiple roles of forests in these aspects of sustainable development, the lack of systematic data in many countries limits an evidence-based demonstration of this. Lacking reliable information, forests and forestry are not always adequately considered in the development of national policies. This sourcebook is intended to help improve data collection on aspects of forests relating to household welfare and livelihoods. It offers practical guidance and measurement tools that can be included in existing social or socioeconomic surveys undertaken by a country’s national statistical office, or in independent national surveys

Economic growth and poverty traps in sub-Saharan Africa: The role of education and TFP shocks

SFX Get it!(opens in a new window)|Entitled full text(opens in a new window)|View at Publisher| Export | Download | More... Research in Economics Volume 67, Issue 3, September 2013, Pages 226-242 Economic growth and poverty traps in sub-Saharan Africa: The role of education and TFP shocks (Article) Cazzavillan, G.a , Donadelli, M.b , Persha, L.c a Department of Economics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy b Department of Economics and Finance, LUISS Guido Carli, Viale Romania 32, 00197 Rome, Italy c Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, United States View references (37) Abstract This paper investigates the ". education-total factor productivity trade-off" in explaining income per worker differences between sub-Saharan (unlucky) and G7 (lucky) economies. First, we examine the dynamics of average years of schooling (i.e. education), capital per worker, income per worker, and total factor productivity (TFP) across sub-Saharan and G7 countries. We confirm that physical capital and education levels partially explain income per worker differences between lucky and unlucky economies. Second, we undertake a novel examination of the impact of technology shocks on income per worker, with the goal of understanding the role of technology variation in causing cross-country income per worker differences, and as a potential contributor to overall slow growth in the sub-Saharan region. In a vector autoregressive (VAR) framework, we show that the impact of ". ad hoc" TFP shocks on income per worker is larger in unlucky economies than in lucky ones. We observe that average TFP volatility in the "unlucky world" is eight times higher than in the "G7 world". We argue that the order of magnitude of the impact heavily depends on the level of the TFP volatility. Last, we suggest that the documented differences in the amount of physical capital and in the productivity of human capital between these two regions add conceptual support for the existence of poverty traps for sub-Saharan Africa

Nesting local forestry initiatives: Revisiting community forest management in a REDD+ world

Understanding the relationship between components of varied decentralized governance models for community or collaborative management and forest conservation outcomes has taken on renewed importance in the context of community engagement in forest conservation efforts through policies to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). In this paper, we synthesize lessons from two comparative case studies of decentralized forest management in Mesoamerica and East Africa in order to examine the institutional factors that contribute to successful tropical forest management in developing countries and, draw insights for policymakers regarding how national policy initiatives, including REDD+, might better embed local level institutions for forest management within broader state institutions and promote more positive local livelihoods and forest conservation outcomes. The case studies presented in this synthesis used a consistent research framework to gather data on forestry reforms, governance processes, local forest institutions, household forest uses and forest conservation outcomes. Our synthesis suggests that successful sustained forest management depends on institutional arrangements that (1) establish local resident rulemaking autonomy, (2) facilitate the flow of external financial and institutional assistance for monitoring and enforcement of local rules, and (3) buffer residents and their respective local institutions from more powerful, and at times corrupt, actors and agencies involved in forest exploitation. The results particularly suggest a role for external, independent non-governmental organizations to help mediate demands on local forest governance systems in nested contexts.Decentralization Forest conservation Joint forest management Institutional analysis Tanzania Central America

A triple win? The impact of Tanzania’s Joint Forest Management programme on livelihoods, governance and forests

Only data used in the analysis published in the Final Report to 3ie on the project, "“The impact of Tanzania’s Joint Forest Management programme on livelihoods, governance and forests" (project code OW3.1109). This project was funded as part of the Open Window Round 3. The data and analysis have not been verified by 3ie as the authors have not submitted the statistical code files to 3ie

Benefit Sharing Among Local Resource Users: The Role of Property Rights ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Extreme inequalities within resource user groups pose a threat to sustainability Ethnically diverse groups experience more unequal sharing of forest harvests Under certain conditions, groups with property rights share harvests more equally Ignoring existing intragroup heterogeneities, REDD+ may deepen income inequalities 4 ABSTRACT Skewed distributions of benefits from natural resources can fuel social exclusion and conflict, threatening sustainability. This paper analyzes how user-group property rights to harvest forest products affect the distribution of benefits from those products within user groups. We argue that groups with recognized harvesting rights share benefits more equally among group members than groups without such rights. We test this argument with data from 350 forest user groups in 14 developing countries. Our results suggest that securing harvesting rights for local user groups can contribute to more equal benefit sharing, especially in ethnically homogenous groups