Deforestation and the Environmental Kuznets Curve in Iran

Property rights, the agricultural price index, forest area, population, income and timber price are important factors in the deforestation process. The aim of this study was to test the impact of these factors on deforestation in Iran using an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). The autoregressive distributed lag approach was also used to estimate the deforestation function. The existence of an inverted U-shaped EKC for deforestation in Iran was confirmed. In addition, there is evidence of a relationship between deforestation and property rights, forest area, agricultural price index and terms of trade. It is concluded that improvement of secure property rights and environmental policies can improve compliance regarding forest land use and reduce the deforestation rate in Iran.     

Barriers to policy implementation and implications for Zambia's forest ecosystems

Policies play a vital role in setting priorities and actions for forest use and management. High rates of forest loss can be attributed to failure by policies to reduce deforestation and forest degradation. It is argued that in most Least Developed Countries such as Zambia, adopted forest and natural resources policies are rarely put into effect resulting in ecosystem degradation.This study examined policy actor's perception of implementation of policies aimed at reducing deforestation and forest degradation and their implications for forest resources.To examine policy implementation, 55 policy actors were interviewed at national, regional and local levels. This included government officials, Non-Governmental Organisations, traditional leaders and local people. Interviews were analysed using discourse analysis.Findings show that policy implementations deficits are prevalent in Zambia's forest sector. Policy actors identified the main barriers as inadequate institutional capacity, inadequate legal framework, political influences, insecure land tenure, poor funding, and lack of intersectoral coordination. The paper has shown gaps between policies and their implementation. To halt deforestation and forest degradation, it is imperative that formulated policies are implemented. This will require improved communication and coordination among government units and various stakeholders, sufficient resources and harmonizing policies and legal frameworks.     

Causes of deforestation in southwestern Madagascar: what do we know?

Causes of deforestation are discussed in the case of southwestern Madagascar. The article has two objectives. First, the idea is to discuss the usual linear regression approach to determine causes of deforestation. Secondly, the intention is to determine the causes of deforestation in our case study. Distinction is made between direct causes (agriculture, wood collection, and pasture land) and indirect causes (migration, export prices, property rights, and government policies). In outlining the strategies of the peasants, the article ends up with an estimation of the value of agricultural land vs. an estimation of benefits derived from utilisation of non-timber forest products from primary forest or scrub (value of medical plants and roots used as staple food).     

Forest property rights in the frame of public policies and societal change

Property rights over natural resources became a distinct area of inquiry in environmental economics and policy in the last decades, but their role has not yet been investigated thoroughly. Transition countries represent an excellent material of analysis of various policies and institutional developments concerning the regime of use and management of natural resources. The processes of societal transformation had deep impacts on the forestry sector, entailing land reforms and subsequent changes to its institutional and organisational framework. This paper presents an analysis of the reciprocal relationship between the evolving forest property rights and the conduct of policy and economic actors, in connection with their outcomes. The theoretical framework consists of institutional economics, whose core concept is that patterns of interaction between institutions and actors produce physical outcomes, assessable by criteria such as equity and efficiency. The study concentrated on three distinct periods and the applicable property regimes. Within this framework, the impacts of the characteristics of property regimes and the general framework of socio-economic conditions on the exercise of property rights were analysed. The analysis of the conduct of forest owners in relation to the institutional design was completed by the analysis of the other actors influential for land reforms. Romanian forestry sector, in evolution from the period shortly before World War II to present, represents the case of the study. Research data were collected by interviewing/questioning, participant observation and literature review. They were analysed through an integrated method of content analysis and a matrix analysis. An important conclusion is that not only the regime of forest property is determinant for the outcomes of resource use and management, but also the general settings in which they are embedded. Another essential point is that land reforms driven by either efficiency or equity rationales are not mere diversions of the benefit stream, but complex processes with serious implications for the status of the resource at stake.     

‘The fridge in the forest’: Historical trajectories of land tenure regulations fostering landscape transformation in Jambi Province,Sumatra, Indonesia

Indonesia has attracted increasing global attention in recent years due to concerns over large-scale deforestation. The island of Sumatra in particular is severely affected by the rapid expansion of monoculture cash crops. Since Dutch colonial times, land tenure regulations here have generally favored such resource exploitation. The current National Development Plan continues to see Sumatra as a center of resource production in order to eradicate poverty and accelerate national development. This developmental focus, however, is accompanied by contested land use scenarios.Taking a historical perspective, this research discloses different layers of past and present land tenure regulations to understand present contestations of land use, resource exploitation, and their social consequences. Based on a village case study, the research demonstrates how different political eras and their accompanying land tenure approaches are inscribed in today's local landscape. We found that de jure regulations which were added to customary laws created a situation of legal pluralism. Our case study explains how local actors craft institutional arrangements in a process of institutional bricolage to use ‘their’ resources.     

Farm and Village Forest Use Practice in Ekiti State: Analysis of Government Policy and Tenure Issues

This study analyzed the influence of government policy and tenure issues on farm and village forest use practices in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Three rural communities that were still far from urban influence were selected from each of the 16 local government areas of the state. In each community, 20 household heads were selected and interviewed with the aid of a semi-structured matrix. The interviews aimed at the determination of respondents' socioeconomic status, awareness and belief in the effectiveness or otherwise of the forest laws and regulations, land use, tenure and property rights. Results obtained revealed that the awareness of forest laws and regulations cut across the socio-economic categories. Most of these laws and regulations that were considered to be necessary could also constitute disincentives to sustainable forest development. Three types of land tenure niches—private holdings, commons, and government reserves—exist in the state. These led to land fragmentations in which individuals are now left with small holdings. Individuals with small and medium landholdings found it difficult to invest in tree planting; hence, they meet their subsistence use of wood and non-wood forest products from diverse sources. Individuals with large landholdings were found cultivating cash tree crops; timber species were not cultivated though their wildlings were preserved. Also, when land is let or leased out, tenants were not allowed to invest in tree planting on such land.     

Institutional Challenges in Sustainable Forest Management: Evidence from the Gambella Regional State of Western Ethiopia

This article explores the ambiguity over property rights to forest resources in the Mejengir Zone of Gambella Regional State in western Ethiopia. Household surveys and focus group discussions were used as data collection tools. Results indicate that the complexities in forest management are mainly attributable to diversity in livelihoods as well as users’ heterogeneity in perceptions and actions. Ambiguity was created both through the process of decentralization in forest management and the demarcation of regional forest priority areas without public participation. The weakness of the state in undertaking effective supervision to overcome corruption has also exacerbated this problem. A lack of well-defined property rights has resulted in deforestation and loss of biodiversity, and unclear property rights, reflecting an ineffective local forest governance structure. The resulting behavioral uncertainty among users puts pressure on forest resources, which favors the conversion of forests into other land use models. State development programs were also found to be sources of ambiguity over property rights and thereby created challenges for collective forest management. Therefore, local institutional structures should be improved to help accommodate more traditional systems of forest management and to ensure sustainability in forest management practices.     

The legally allowable versus the informally practicable in Bolivia’s domestic timber market

We analyze legality in the forest sector in Bolivia, focusing particularly on the domestic timber value chain in the northern Bolivian Amazon. Bolivia adopted wide-reaching forest, land and democratic regulatory changes since the mid-1990s that were partly intended to reduce illegal logging and related practices. The new forest regulations, in turn, led to new illegal practices because implementation and sanctioning were poor, but also because new forest and land regulations were inadequate and often contradictory. In response, the government and various forest agencies adopted new measures to address the new illegal practices. These forest regulatory and forest policy renovations and modifications of the last two decades are, for instance, reflected in the domestic timber market of the northern Bolivian Amazon, a region that relies heavily on the forest sector. The paper analyzes Bolivia’s regulatory changes that were relevant for legality in the forest sector and the multiple modifications that were made to address shortcomings of these reforms. It also analyses legality in the domestic timber value chain in northern Bolivia. The new actors involved in especially the domestic timber value chain have moved away from formal and legal mechanisms to benefit from timber that grows on their land and forests to practices that were not considered or actually shunned in the law and that appear difficult to regulate. Unless these new practices are recognized adequately in a new forestry law, some of the production and trade of the timber value chain will likely continue to operate at the margin of legality.     

Development narratives,notions of forest crisis,and boom of oil palm plantations in Indonesia

Indonesia experienced massive deforestation in the last decades where rapid oil palm expansion has been considered as one of the main drivers. This article shows that the process of deforestation and the rapid oil palm expansion cannot be viewed in isolation from broader development contexts. Various actors at local, national, and global levels have used development narratives and poverty alleviation through various policies and institutional setting to create spaces and opportunities for oil palm development. These actors also deliberately created the notion of forest crisis by omitting the values of forest environmental services to justify forest conversion into oil palm plantations. These multiple factors shaped the speed and the direction of oil palm expansion in Indonesia. This rapid oil palm expansion in Indonesia has resulted in massive LUCC and serious environmental problems. Given these complexities, a single policy will not be sufficient when it comes to managing the consequences of rapid oil palm expansion in Indonesia.     

Regional Comparative Advantage,Location of Agriculture,and Deforestation in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This article highlights how deforestation is not only linked to economic processes within the Amazon, but also to economic forces in the rest of Brazil. In light of recent trends in Brazil's agricultural production inside and outside the Amazon, this article maintains that the growing importance of beef production in the Amazon relative to the rest of Brazil is likely to lead to further increases in deforestation. From 1991 to 2001 the Amazon's share of the Brazilian bovine herd increased from 15% to 25%—an average change of 1% per year. With the Brazilian herd size in 2003 estimated at 196 million head of cattle, the current rate of increase implies an increase of 1.96 million cattle per year in the Amazon. At Brazil's average stocking rate of 1.1 head of cattle per hectare, it means that an additional 18,000 km² of land are needed each year in the Amazon to account for this expansion. However, Brazil has abundant agricultural land outside the Amazon to meet increases in demand for beef. The difficulty lies in the comparative advantage of these other areas in producing soy and grains as opposed to livestock. I conclude that targeting resources toward specific agricultural development opportunities outside the Amazon—especially grain-fed beef— would be an effective way to reduce incentives to clear land in the Amazon.     

Zero Deforestation Zones: The Case for Linking Deforestation-Free Supply Chain Initiatives and Jurisdictional REDD+

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) presents the idea of Zero Deforestation Zones (ZDZs) as a solution to implement private sector deforestation-free supply chain commitments by leveraging synergies between Jurisdictional REDD+, private sector initiatives, and governmental laws and regulations. Companies would source commodities that meet their deforestation commitments from jurisdictions implementing REDD+ programs, government monitoring systems, and functioning private sector initiatives. A definition of “zero deforestation” would be created through a multistakeholder process considering a number of different elements. ZDZs would align incentives between actors, generating multiple benefits for companies, governments, and local communities—including reduced costs of monitoring deforestation, low-risk areas for long-term investment, increased legal compliance, and conflict resolution between companies and local communities. Environmental integrity would also be improved because a larger area of forest would be protected, reducing risks of leakage and nonpermanence.     

林业碳汇供给主体产权权益保障问题探析

随着“双碳”目标的提出，林业碳汇作为目前最为经济的“碳吸收”手段逐渐受到全社会的关注。文中界定了林业碳汇供给主体的产权权益，探讨了林业碳汇供给主体产权权益保障存在的现实困境，包括林业碳汇产权归属的供给主体不明、林业碳汇产权的收益权残缺以及林业碳汇计量门槛高、项目方法学尚需完善等；在剖析困境成因的基础上，提出了林业碳汇供给主体产权权益保障的实现路径，即制定林业碳汇配套的法律法规、明晰林业碳汇产权归属的供给主体、保障林业碳汇产权收益权能的实现和完善产权权益受损救济途径等。     

退耕还林工程实施过程中的寻租行为分析

以我国退耕还林工程中的“毁林造林”现象为例,从经济学视角分析林业部门寻租行为成因,得出林农法律意识薄弱、林业部门收益不足、政府监管不完善等是产生寻租行为的主要动因,据此提出依托明确的林地产权界定提升农民对土地物权意识、加强对地方林业部门支持力度、完善生态补偿政策和司法监督机制等政策建议。     

The restoration of research

Research per se is a highly heterogeneous activity with a variety of objectives, actors and stakeholders, and a range of mechanisms to enhance collaboration while minimizing cost and unnecessary duplication. There is an urgent need to disseminate the results of research in forms that can be understood by policy-makers, administrators, the media and the public as well as by resource managers and peer scientists.To be effective, research itself needs to be restored. It must be both proactive and reactive to policy and public issues and use modern techniques of information technology and networking. Current human demands on forests for social, environmental and economic benefits require new, interdisciplinary approaches to research and rapid implementation of relevant results by appropriate stakeholders.In this paper, the extents, rates and causes of deforestation are identified together with the criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management that have specific relevance to restoration of site productivity. The changes in forest policies and management objectives over the second half of the 20th century are described and it is recognized that the role of forests as global resources may conflict with national sovereignty.     

Governing the design of national REDD +: An analysis of the power of agency

This paper investigates how three aspects of governance systems, namely the policy context, the influence of key agents and their discursive practices, are affecting national-level processes of policy design aimed at REDD +, reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries; and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries. We conducted analysis in six REDD + countries (Brazil, Cameroon, Indonesia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Vietnam). The paper combines three methods: policy analysis, media-based discourse analysis and policy network analysis. The paper shows that policies both within and outside the forestry sector that support deforestation and forest degradation create path dependencies and entrenched interests that hamper policy change. In addition, most dominant policy coalitions do not challenge business-as-usual trajectories, reinforcing existing policy and political structures. No minority policy coalitions are directly tackling the root causes of deforestation and forest degradation, that is, the politico-economic conditions driving them. Instead they focus on environmental justice issues, such as calls for increased participation of indigenous people in decision-making. Only in two of the six countries are these transformational change coalitions vocal enough to be heard, yet to exercise their agency effectively and to support more substantial reforms, these coalitions would need the participation of more influential policy actors, particularly state agencies that have the authority to make binding decisions about policy. Furthermore, discourses supporting transformational change would need to be reflected in institutional practices and policy decisions.     

An Error Correction Modeling (ECM) of the Determinants of Deforestation in Nigeria

Abstract

Persistent deforestation is one of the major constraints to sustainable economic development in Nigeria. This study used the Error Correction Mechanism (ECM) to determine the economic factors influencing deforestation. The data were national aggregates collected from several secondary sources for 1961-2000. Data analysis showed that there were at least 7 cointegrating vectors in the estimated model. Also, the dynamic unrestricted short-run parameters of cereal cropland growth rates (0.564), tuber cropland growth rates (-1.961), permanent cropland growth rate (22.136), tuber yield (0.126), livestock population (-2.156), human population (-9.214), other land areas (0.281), agricultural Gross Domestic Product (0.156), and roundwood production (0.684) had significant impact on deforestation (p < 0.05). The study recommends that efforts to address further deforestation should include enforcement of laws guiding the cutting of forest trees and research development to ensure development of crop hybrids that are resistant to environmental Stress, among others.     

Spatial Modeling of Tropical Deforestation Using Socioeconomic and Biophysical Data

Tropical forests are disappearing at an alarming rate. In Central America, a hectare of forest is cleared for agriculture every 5 min. This study was conducted in a forested 4,000 ha watershed of central Honduras to find deforestation causes based on socio-economic characteristics of population. First, a multitemporal analysis of Landsat TM imagery was conducted to determine deforestation rates and agricultural–forest boundaries. A GIS buffer procedure allowed determining which households were at the deforestation front and which households were located at the rest of the area (control). GIS techniques were used to extract biophysical information such as slope, elevation, land cover, temperature, precipitation, etc. Then, we set up a data base with more than 50 socioeconomic variables (level of education, income, children per family, major economic activity, use of conservation practices, etc.). Around 500 households, distributed all over the watershed, were visited, interviewed and GPS-located. A multivariate statistical analysis allowed an exploratory analysis to eliminate non useful and redundant variables and then to determine what variables appear to be important predictors of deforestation behavior among rural families. A resulting logistic regression model showed that household with lower annual income heads and with less use of conservation practices were more statistically prone to clear the forest (α = 0.001). The study uncovered the complexity of this problem and confirmed the need of using GIS–remote sensing techniques to combine socioeconomic and environmental data in several time–space dimensions to find the causes and trends of tropical deforestation.     

Confusion vs. clarity: Property rights and forest use in Uganda

Projects and policies targeted at reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD +) frequently emphasize the articulation of property rights that are new, formalized or revised. A major question for successful REDD + implementation, and forest sector reform more broadly, is how changes in formal rights are understood and internalized by resource users. This paper explores the determinants of knowledge of formal rights, and whether accurate knowledge of rights influences forest clearing and forest product harvesting behavior in Uganda. We find limited awareness of rules surrounding clearing forest, and mixed levels of awareness regarding rights to harvest specific forest products. Harvesting behavior is variably correlated with awareness of rights depending on the product and capacity of district forest officials.     

青海省以国家公园为主体建立自然保护地体系探析

分析青海省自然保护地体系及其基本特征,对自然保护地现状进行评价。结果显示:青海省自然保护地以国家公园和自然保护区为主,包含水利风景区、湿地公园、水产种质资源保护区、沙漠公园、森林公园、地质公园、风景名胜区等类型;管理体制存在生态保护多头管理、政出多门问题严重,政策法规和标准体系庞杂交叉甚至矛盾,土地权属复杂混乱等问题。提出自然保护地体系由以自然保护区为主体向以国家公园为主体转变;服从大局,整合资源,统一规划管理;尊重自然法则,实现严格保护和人与自然和谐共生的有效统一等建议。     

Conserving Forests in Privatized Commons: Trends and Management Options in an Ifugao Village,Philippines

This study addresses the question, ‘How can remaining forests be conserved when these are already individually privatized, and when the people prefer landuses other than forestry?’ These changes in landuse and forest ownership are demonstrated through a case study of a village in Ifugao, Philippines. A rapid and continued conversion of forest into agricultural land is observed, particularly for vegetable farming. Traditionally, most of the village total land area was under communal land ownership, but now almost half is under de facto private ownership. This transition in land (including forest) ownership is generally attributed to increased demand for land which is further attributed to changes in peoples’ values towards wealth accumulation rather than redistribution, greater integration to the market economy and a shift towards commercial agriculture. Past forest policies have been ineffective in regulating the landuse largely because they have not reflected local reality, and this appears to be true with the present national forest management strategy of community-based forest management. It is argued that the granting of land titles will improve forest conservation because it will improve the enforcement of forest laws and related contractual agreements. Based on the reality of private land ownership, it is further argued that forest policy in IP land should include private (individual, family or household) forest management. Given the possibility that indigenous people may prefer landuses other than forestry or may sell their property for various reasons, policies should regulate landuse as well as make it legal for IPs to transfer rights of ownership to ‘outsiders’. There is scope to improve the implementation of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act in the Philippines.