- Professor, retired, Duke and Virginia Tech Universities. Hyde: 1930 S Broadway, Grand Junction, Co 81507, USA
- Received 13 July 2015, Revised 28 November 2015, Accepted 26 March 2016, Available online 29 June 2016
Abstract
Devolution
in forestry generally refers to the transfer of some degree of central
government authority to local responsibility. It commonly takes the form
of recommendations by external advisors in developing country
situations who encourage formally organized decision making by a local
political community. This paper reviews the literature on local tenure,
the summaries of case studies in forestry, and the broader history of
experience with collectives and cooperatives with the objective of
identifying the characteristic cases where some form of collective or
community forest management might be successful. The paper identifies
four cases. It concludes that, at some level, smaller groups of managers
may cooperate in labor and capital intensive activities like fire
control or harvesting, or in specialized activities beyond their
personal expertise, activities like processing and marketing their
products. Successful and sustainable community-wide collective
enterprises seldom include agricultural or forest land—with the
possible, and likely impermanent, exception of low-valued open access
land beyond the perimeter of agricultural crops and managed forests.
Keywords
- Community forestry;
- Collective action;
- Devolution
© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
